Pages on social media circulated a report claiming that two civilians were killed by fire from the security forces during protests that took place in the town of Tell Menin in the Damascus countryside over the issue of water wells.
The fact-checking team conducted a field inquiry that included contacting the head of the media office in the city of Al-Tall and the official in charge of the area, who confirmed that the protests had taken place while denying the circulating claims that anyone had been killed during them, explaining that the only cases recorded were injuries caused by crowd crushing. He added that some of the water wells belonging to the water corporation are out of service and undergoing maintenance work, and that there are no operations to dig new wells.
Why is this claim misleading?
Distortion of content: The claim rested on a true occurrence, namely that the protests took place, and then attached to it inaccurate information about people being killed by fire from the security forces, inflating the scale of the event and presenting it in a form that differs from what actually happened.
