Pages and accounts on social media circulated a video clip, with its publishers claiming that it shows a filmed farewell to victims who died as a result of a depot explosion in the Ayyash area of Deir ez-Zor governorate.
The fact-checking team traced the circulating clip by breaking it down into still frames and carrying out a reverse image search, and it became clear that the video is old and was used outside its temporal and geographic context, and has no connection to the depot explosion in Deir ez-Zor. The results showed that the clip dates back to 26 February 2026, and that it in fact documents a farewell by members of the Internal Security to their colleagues who died in an attack carried out by members of the "ISIS" organisation on the Sabahiya checkpoint at the western entrance to the city of Raqqa.
Why is this claim misleading?
Out of temporal and geographic context: The claim relied on recycling an old video clip dating back to 26 February 2026 and changing its temporal and geographic context, in order to suggest that it documents a farewell to victims of the Ayyash depot explosion in Deir ez-Zor.
