The photo was shared thousands of times with the same false claim Facebook And X. AFP debunked a similar claim after it emerged in Arabic-language reports.
The reports surfaced online after explosions targeting Hezbollah communications equipment killed September 17 and 18 39 people and almost 3,000 injured (archived link).
The attack was widely blamed on Israel, which declined to comment.
Hezbollah did that traded almost daily cross-border fire with Israel since Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel, which sparked the war in the Gaza Strip (archived link).
The unprecedented attack resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli figures, including hostages who died in captivity.
Of the 251 hostages seized by militants, 97 are still being held in Gaza, including 33 who the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 41,788 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to health ministry figures in the Hamas-held territory.
The UN has described the figures as reliable.
However, this photo has been circulating online since 2021.
Photo from Egypt
A reverse image search on Google found the original photo published by the Egyptian newspaper Cairo 24 on March 19, 2021, among other images of the burned device (archived link).
According to the report, an iPhone exploded while charging, causing a fire in a residential area in the southern part of the Egyptian capital Cairo. A child fell and broke his arm while fleeing the scene, the report said.
Below is a screenshot comparison of the fake message (left) and the original photo published by Cairo 24 (right):
The owner of the phone told Cairo 24 that he filed a report with the police station and provided eight photos of the damaged iPhone, including the phone’s original packaging, “describing the incident and accusing the iPhone company of negligence, in which he emphasized that the telephone no longer existed.” than a month old.”
The same incident was reported by Arab media Elnabaa (archived link).
AFP previously published fact-checked reports wrongly linking an old photo to the pager blast in Lebanon here.