2023-10-16 01:44:00
BBC confirmed that women and young children were among the dead (photo: BBC) The first reports emerged on Friday night (13/10) regarding an attack on a convoy of vehicles heading south of Gaza Strip. These vehicles transported civilians, who were fleeing northern Palestinian territory after the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) issued an evacuation order before an announced land incursion.
Videos showing the carnage at the scene emerged shortly after. Palestinian authorities have blamed Israel for the attack and say that, in total, 70 people died in the attack. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) claim to be investigating the incident.
A BBC Verify, a BBC checking unit, confirmed that the attack took place on Salah-al-Din Street, which is one of the two evacuation routes from northern Gaza to the south. Is that at least 12 people died, including women and children. Below are the techniques used to verify the authenticity of the videos.
What does the video show?
The longest video we checked is too graphic to show. a scene of total carnage. Men are seen running towards a path shouting prayers and laments into the smoke-filled air. Sirens and car alarms can be heard everywhere.
Read: Brazilian woman’s daughter is among Hamas hostages
As the camera gets closer to the path, the extent of the devastation becomes clear. Bodies, twisted and mutilated, are scattered everywhere.
Later, the mangled body of a small child — a boy, dressed in shorts and a T-shirt — can be seen lying on the path, his head twisted awkwardly toward the camera.
Read: Israel’s deadline for people to leave northern Gaza comes to an end
We counted at least 12 bodies among the wreckage. They are mostly women and children — some of whom appear to be between two and five years old.
Other images show the bodies of the victims lying in the street. Vehicles are seen on fire, probably with their drivers and passengers still inside.
Several videos emerged on social media showing the immediate consequences of the attack.
According to local press, the attack took place on the Salah al-Din road, an important highway that crosses Gaza from north to south and one of the only two evacuation routes for civilians living in the north of the territory.
The road was heavily trafficked throughout Friday as Gazans living in the north adhered to Israeli warnings to vacate the area.
We start by checking the first video, which shows the devastating consequences of the attack. We focused our attention on this 45-kilometer stretch of road, starting in the north, as it was from there that the convoy would probably have departed.
In addition to the scenes of death and destruction, the video also revealed a series of important details — buildings, road markings, signage — that offered clues about the location.
Using freely available satellite imagery, we looked along this road, looking for areas that matched the details we had seen.
We concluded that the location of the attack was a few kilometers from the southern outskirts of Gaza City.
We performed a reverse image search on certain keyframes of the footage to ensure the material was recent and had not been reposted from an older incident, as is often the case on social media.
Finally, we used online tools that identify the angle of sunlight and the length of shadows to verify that the footage was filmed at 5:30 pm local time (11:30 am Brasilia) on October 13th.
Having established the key details, we were able to identify common features in other images claiming to show the incident.
This included a video recorded about 100 meters away that showed the burning vehicles but not the road that appears to have been the target of the attack.
Before the attack
Another video began circulating on X (formerly Twitter) on Saturday morning.
It shows a convoy fleeing northern Gaza, filmed near the location where the aftermath of the attack was recorded.
We estimate that more than 30 people are on board the vehicle in the video. We don’t know for sure if this path was exactly the one hit in the images we saw of the attack.
Online software that analyzes the angle of shadows tells us that the video was likely filmed between 3:30 pm and 5:20 pm local time on Friday.
The width and division of the road show that it must be a main road, as the wide path shown would not fit on a residential street.
Using satellite images, we were able to verify the exact location of the vehicle using the position of nearby buildings and trees and analyzing the shadows cast by residential buildings.
We also know that the attack took place south of this location. This video was filmed northeast of the attack, where the convoy was likely hours before it was hit.
BBC Verify will continue to monitor the situation.
#Attack #convoy #children #women #Gaza #video #shows #International