Does a video on TikTok show an Israeli drone dropping a bomb on a group of defenseless Palestinian women and children trying to fill water containers? No, that's not true: The footage of the explosion caused by a drone dropping a bomb on a group of people shows a Sudanese drone attack on the Sudanese Rapid Support Force (RSF) militia gathered around a fuel tank; it has nothing to do with Israel or Palestinian civilians.
The claim appeared in a video on TikTok (archived here) published by @ventsiangelovchicagoto on October 21, 2023.
The Bulgarian text overlay (translated from Bulgarian to English by Lead Stories staff) read:
Zionist drone mass slaughtered defenseless Palestinian women and children filling water! This is the true face of Zionism - butchers and barbarians!
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Mon Oct 30 07:53:50 2023 UTC)
Lead Stories did a Google Lens reverse image search (archived here) on November 6, 2023, that shows that the explosion occurred in Sudan. The search results show numerous social media posts, as seen here, here and here, saying that the drone attack took place in Sudan and had no connection to Israel or Palestine. Multiple publications in Sudanese media confirmed this.
In a post dated October 12, 2023, on the social network X (formerly Twitter), Sudan News published the video and reported in a text, translated to English by Chrome, that the explosion was a result of an army attack targeting a group of Rapid Support militia mercenaries who had gathered to refuel their motorcycles.
In another post, translated to English by Chrome, on the official social media Al Jazeera network page, where the same video can be seen posted on October 12, 2023, Al Jazeera - Sudan, reported that the explosion was the result of a Sudanese army attack against a fuel depot belonging to the Rapid Support Force (RSF) in Khartoum. Local Sudanese media are reporting the news, citing Al Jazeera, as seen here and here.
An October 22, 2023, post on a pro-Palestine social media channel supports this information and insists that such fake news should not be shared because it could backfire and do more harm to the Palestinian cause.
In an article dated October 21, 2023, on the same topic, AFP proves that the geolocation of the facilities visible in the footage is in Sudan. In their article, they show that when comparing elements of the video with those of a location near the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, using Google Maps, it can be confirmed that the elements from the video fully match visually to a fuel storage depot in Sudan.
A similar drone attack posted on Sudanese media channels can be seen here.
