Lisbon, July 27, 2025 (Lusa Verifica) - Starvation in the Gaza Strip is generating misinformation on social media, with pro-Israel accounts denying the veracity of real and verifiable images and pro-Palestinian accounts (and others) illustrating the humanitarian emergency with unrelated images.
+++ Claim: images of hunger in Gaza are from Yemen, and a palestinian child is so weak he can no longer cry +++
Over the past week, social media and the media have shared dramatic images of hunger and extreme malnutrition in the Gaza Strip, mainly photos and videos of emaciated and starving children and desperate and exhausted parents.
On Thursday, the French newspaper Libération ran a front-page photo of a malnourished Palestinian child (https://archive.is/wx8Pz) and social media users quickly accused it of using a stock photo from September 2016, allegedly from Yemen (https://archive.ph/sfFE4), and accounts belonging to the French Jewish community amplified this criticism (https://archive.is/VuIGV).
Another photo of the same child, this time in his father’s arms, circulated. Helena Ferro Gouveia, an international affairs analyst, highlighted it on X, asserting that the image dates from 2016 in Yemen and describing the initial claim as a statement that the media and “believers” repeated uncritically in this post: https://archive.ph/hZ1Eo.
On the same date and the following day, Friday, newspapers such as The Guardian (https://archive.ph/wuglw), Le Monde (https://archive.ph/REdDK) and Correio da Manhã (https://archive.is/EuUww), among others, chose another striking photo for their front pages, showing a mother holding a skeletal child dressed only in what appears to be a makeshift nappy made from a black plastic bag.
Several media outlets, such as the BBC (https://archive.is/ZtHxJ) and CNN (https://archive.), shared this image the day before ( https://is/kvTRR), which claimed that it was Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub al-Matouq, a one-and-a-half-year-old Palestinian child who weighs only six kilograms because of health problems and malnutrition requiring ongoing care.
However, several national and international accounts on social media, such as X, also attributed the photo to the conflict in Yemen, presenting the following examples: https://archive.ph/r7UGY, https://archive.ph/mBSy9, and https://archive.ph/A4EVe.
During this period, a video also circulated that allegedly showed a Palestinian baby too weak to cry due to hunger. Social media users viewed these images hundreds of thousands of times on social media (examples: https://archive.ph/ds7A4 and https://archive.ph/T5LfS), and Palestinian channels even shared them.
+++ Facts: the three photos are real and from Gaza, and the video features a child from Pakistan +++
The newspaper’s fact-checking team has clarified the origin of the photo on the front page of Libération, showing that it depicts a child in Gaza: https://archive.is/hvFNS.
Reverse searches easily verify this fact by identifying the report that photographer Omar Al-Qataanaa of the AFP agency produced in the Al-Shati refugee camp in Gaza on 23 July (https://archive.ph/ifY1T), including the image of two-year-old Yazan: https://archive.is/ldINf.
The same type of reverse search also shows that the photo that commentator Helena Ferro Gouveia claims is from Yemen, apparently based on a response from Grok that was not correct, Ahmed Jihad Ibrahim Al-arini, from the Turkish agency Anadolu (https://archive.ph/ocStQ), captured the took the picture a few days earlier, of little Yazan from Al-Shati, Gaza. Ahmed also produced an extensive report on that family from Gaza: https://archive.ph/TEX5n.
The Libération team and user Ana António already noted this error by Grok, and Ana António, in several attempts, showed X’s AI a more accurate perspective. She explained that other photos of the same family in Gaza exist and that the origin indicated by Grok belongs to another child (see sequences https://archive.ph/idR0W and https://archive.is/w5Rbl). Interestingly, another French user managed to get Grok to admit the error: https://archive.is/k7E8C.
The same Anadolu photographer is also the author of another iconic photo, that of Muhammad al-Matouq, and disinformation campaigns now target it. As with the previous ones, a reverse search followed by searches on the agency’s pages or image banks such as Getty Images quickly finds the report (https://archive.ph/qAVzA) about this other family from Gaza that graced the front pages of national and international newspapers and whose story various media outlets, such as the BBC, have told, explaining that the child already had health problems before malnutrition: https://archive.ph/vaTnY.
As for the video of the child having seizures, we carefully read some of the tweets and identified warnings that the video may instead concern Pakistan, as it appeared on a page dedicated to children being treated in a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) that appears to be linked to Pakistan: https://archive.is/IChXu.
Lusa Verifica found the same video on associated Instagram (https://archive.ph/wh008) and TikTok (https://ghostarchive.org/archive/CHko2) accounts, in which, in several responses, the authors say that it is a Pakistani child named Abubakar and mention only Pakistan, without referring to Gaza.
Additional research confirmed this identity as well as the NICU where the child is being treated in Pakistan, at the Timergara Children’s Hospital, where the team has been sharing the case and daily updates on Facebook (https://archive.is/DXEFT) and YouTube: https://archive.ph/Wjdw2.
Furthermore, in one of the videos shared on the YouTube page of one of the doctors, viewers can find the same location and the same equipment that appear in the video that someone falsely attributes to a child from Gaza: https://archive.is/CHdsh.
+++ Contradictory +++
Lusa Verifica managed to contact the paediatrician, Ilyas Khan, who assures that “the video shows a child from Gaza” is an inaccurate claim and does not reflect the facts, given that “that child is currently in the neonatal intensive care unit of a hospital in Pakistan”, information that the official email account of the health unit also confirms.
The Facebook page that posted the video also confirmed to Lusa that the baby “is from Pakistan, not Gaza, and his name is Abubakar.” Doctors in that Pakistani NICU are treating him for several “health problems that his parents’ limited knowledge has aggravated.”
For her part, analyst Helena Ferro Gouveia replied that she reproduced information from “a post by a German journalist from the Bild newspaper” and that Grok also validated the information. However, she did not provide a link, but acknowledged that the journalist “may have been mistaken.” ‘Believing what we see every day of inaccurate reporting and misleading narratives in the Portuguese press and the anti-Semitic bias, I acknowledge that yes, there may have been an error on the part of my primary source.’
In her written responses to Lusa Verifica, the analyst recommends an article by David Collier about the photo of Muhammad al-Matouq in his mother’s arms, which the British journalist describes as more than the face of hunger: “the face of a clinically vulnerable child whose tragic situation hijackers have weaponised”. https://archive.ph/3MVFr and https://archive.ph/c4RwR.
Helena Ferro Gouveia also suggests that “people should investigate the photographer” because “he has jihad in his name, which is quite suggestive in the context of the Middle East, he works for the Turkish agency Anadolu and Turkey (…) is a friend of Israel and will do everything to promote peace with Israel.”
+++ Lusa Verifica assessment: False +++
Dozens of NGOs and international institutions (https://archive.ph/bePw5), including the United Nations (https://archive.ph/S2REC), repeat the warnings about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, including “widespread starvation,” every day, but several inaccurate images and narratives are also circulating.
Pro-Israel accounts label real images of sick and malnourished children as fake, and pro-Palestinian accounts circulate unrelated videos as true, fostering a scenario of misinformation where well-intentioned users rely on unreliable artificial intelligence and could spend a few minutes verifying through reverse searches before sharing content.
LYGA/ADB // ADB.
Lusa
