A video of two men asking a small child the whereabouts of her parents has been falsely claimed online to show an Israeli girl with her Palestinian kidnappers.
The footage has a superimposed caption: “lost girl” in Arabic and features two men interacting with a small girl in a public space.
“Lost along the way,” one of the men says (translated from Arabic).
The other says to the girl: "Who are your parents? Where is your mum, where is your father, with whom did you come?”
Accounts on X, formerly known as Twitter, and Facebook, shared the video as if filmed after the shock Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Islamist militant group Hamas, by writing: “Hamas terrorist with kidnapped Jewish baby girl.”
However, the video was posted on TikTok on Sept. 8, a month prior to the ambush.
The TikTok clip did not provide information on where the footage was filmed. It has since been deleted.
The Iran-backed Hamas group carried out its biggest attack on Israel in years on Oct. 7. Israel responded with its heaviest ever bombardment of the Gaza Strip.
VERDICT
Miscaptioned. The video was posted on TikTok on Sept. 8 and predates clashes between Israel and Hamas in October 2023.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work.
