Amidst the ongoing tension between Israel and Hezbollah, an image of soldiers marching is circulating extensively on social media. Many users claim that the Afghan fighters on their way to join Hezbollah.
A Facebook user posted the image with a caption, Breaking: Thousands of additional Afghan fighters from the Fatemiyoun Brigade have arrived in Syria to bolster Hezbollah’s ranks if needed – I24. It’s already happening. After announcing just a few weeks ago, the Taliban are already fulfilling their promise. Taliban brigades are being formed and are preparing in Syria for the war with Israel. Next are the Houthis, who have a huge mobilisation potential — 2 million reservists.
You can check the above post here. (Archive)
FACT CHECK
NewsMobile fact-checked the claim, and found it to be misleading.
Running a Reverse Image Search of the image, the NM team found a report by Salaam Times, dated April 26, 2018, featuring the same picture, with a title: “Burgeoning Russia-Iran alliance inflames sectarian tensions across the Muslim world.”
According to the report, members of the IRGC-backed Afghan Fatemiyoun Division were marching to fight with the support of the Russian military to aid Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and to advance Iran’s sectarian interests.
The claim in the Facebook post attributed the information to i24 News, an Israeli television news channel. However, we could not find any related reports on their website.
Thus, we can conclusively say that the viral image is fake, as it does not depict Afghan fighters on their way to join Hezbollah.
