A Twitter account with more than 16 thousand followers shared a Tweet on Oct 28, 2022, captioned “Eritrean/Ethiopian rocket attack on Shire Town [Tigray] injured several children”, and attached two images along with the post.
By the time this article is published the post had more than 243 reactions and was retweeted more than 500 times.
HaqCheck inspected the Tweet and rendered the post-Partly-False.
The war between the Tigray people liberation front (TPLF) and the Federal government broke out on Nov 2020 after TPLF alledgedly attacked the northern command in Tigray.
After five months of humanitarian truce, the fighting between the Federal government and TPLF resumed on August 24, 2022. Both sides blamed one another for the provocation of the conflict that led to the eruption of the engagement anew.
On Oct 1, 2022, the Chairperson of the African Union Commission (AUC) wrote an open letter to TPLF leader Debretsion Gebremichael (Ph.D.). The commission invited the TPLF leader to the peace talk to be placed in South Africa from Sunday, Oct 8, 2022.
In a statement issued on Oct 5, 2022, TPLF announced that it accepted the African Union’s invitation to the peace talks.
The government communication service on its side said in its statement that “The African Union’s invitation was found to be consistent, with the government’s previous peace calls. It is remembered that the government has been taking all kinds of remedial measures to resolve the conflict and will continue to do so”.
It is in the situation of the resumed conflict that the tweet was produced.
In an attempt to ensure the correctness of images used by the Twitter account, HaqCheck used a google reverse image search and found the first image on a Facebook page with more than 600 thousand followers posted on Oct 8, 2022, captioned, “Civilians and animals are dead by a drone strike at Shire [Tigray].” and attached ten images along with the post.
Whereas the second image was found on a licensed commercial platform of photos called depositphotos.com. The image was posted on March 24, 2022, that shows an unexploded rocket launcher BM-21 “Grad” on the Saltovsky massif in Kharkiv
Even if there are several claims that there was an airstrike by the Eritrean government in different parts of Tigray. The image used to show the rocket attack is wrong.
Therefore HaqCheck inspected the post and rendered it Partly-False.
