On March 10, a disinformation-spreading account, “I Am Blocked Again, Fantina,” published a video with the following description: “Executed Angels!! The Creator will not let them go for this unpunished!!” The video shows dozens of murdered children, creating the impression that it is related to the clashes that began in March 2025 between Syria’s new government and supporters of former President Bashar al-Assad.
The video was actually recorded in August 2013 and depicts children who died from chemical weapons in Ghouta, Syria. Therefore, it is not related to the recent conflict between Syria’s new government and Alawites but to the Syrian Civil War. However, it is important to note that last week’s armed clashes resulted in the deaths of hundreds of civilians.
The footage was circulated with different claims in different contexts until 2025, among them linking it to the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. However, by using the reverse image search technique on individual frames of the video, we verified that the mass death of these children is connected to the Syrian Civil War in 2013.
The Syrian Revolution Archive’s Facebook page shared an identical video in August 2024. The post states that these are images of martyrs who died on August 21, 2013, in a village near Damascus after the Syrian regime used chemical weapons in Eastern and Western Ghouta. An identical video has also been published on the Syrian Revolution Archive’s Instagram page.
In August 2024, the same Facebook page also published photos depicting children who died from chemical weapons in Damascus in August 2013. .
Although the video is of low resolution, at one point, the date “2013-8-21” can also be seen on the footage. This further confirms that the footage does not depict events from 2025.
In August 2013, a chemical weapons attack carried out by the Syrian regime in Eastern Ghouta claimed the lives of many people. Although the Syrian regime denied the use of chemical weapons, a UN investigative report confirmed that rockets containing sarin gas were used in the region. The fact that the rockets and launch devices matched those in the Syrian government’s weapons arsenal made the regime, which blamed the opposition groups, the primary suspect in the Ghouta massacre. Various fact-checking organizations have analyzed this video at different times (1,2).
On March 6, 2025, armed conflict broke out in Syria between the current government and supporters of former President Bashar al-Assad. The clashes are mainly taking place in the western part of the country, where Alawites reside. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), at least 973 civilians have been killed in recent days in the provinces of Latakia, Tartus, and Hama.
Numerous videos and photos related to the ongoing events are circulating on social media. While some accurately depict the current conflict in Syria, many are manipulated or shared out of context. See fact-checked materials by Myth Detector on this topic:
- The Video Circulating on Social Media Does Not Depict Current Events in Syria
- The Video Showing Syrian Christians Erecting a Cross Was Filmed in 2024
The article has been written in the framework of Facebook’s fact-checking program. You can read more about the restrictions that Facebook may impose based on this article via this link. You can find information about appealing or editing our assessment via this link.
Read detailed instructions for editing the article.
Read detailed appeal instructions.
