Photos of civilian victims were claimed to be of opposition combatants

Pro-Assad regime Facebook pages posted photos claiming that they are of opposition combatants who were killed by regime forces.

These pages posted three photos of plain-clothes young men, claiming that they were members of Jaish al-Izza (an opposition faction).

 

Verify-Sy fact-checked these claims; it turned out that anti-Assad regime Facebook pages circulated the photos during 2017-2018, which refutes that the three young men were killed during the recent battles between Assad regime and opposition factions in Hama countryside.

Activists from Halfaya, a town in Hama countryside, said to Verify-Sy that the young men, who originated in the area, died in three different incidents: Alaa al-Khalil died in 2017 after falling from the third floor while working in Turkey, regime airstrikes killed Mutaz Mo’ayyad al-A’raj along with his wife and another woman in 2017 in Ma’rshorien in southern Idlib, while Mousa Mohammad al-Khalil died due to a heart attack in February 2018.

Over 223,000 Syrian civilians have been killed from March 2011 until March 2019, most of whom have been killed by Assad and its Russian ally, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights.