PARTLY FALSE: This image is not of people donating blood to Mogadishu attack victims in August 2024
The image has been online since 2022
This post on X (formerly Twitter) purportedly claiming to show Somali young men are lining up to donate blood for the wounded people in the Al-Shabab attack on Mogadishu beach on 3 August 2024 is PARTLY FALSE.
The photo shows individuals standing in line inside what appears to be a hospital.
The text accompanying the post reads, “Youth are queuing up to donate blood in response to the urgent appeal from Mogadishu hospitals to help severely injured victims of Friday’s attack at Lido beach.”
A similar image was shared here.
Local and international media reported that at least 37 civilians were killed and 212 were injured in an explosion and shooting at a popular beach restaurant in the Somali capital late on 3 August 2024, as seen here
, here and here.
The Federation of Somali Journalists (FESOJ) conducted a Google reverse image search and found that the photo has been on the internet since 2022.
The image was published by the Radio Risaal website on 30 October 2022, in an article titled “Blood donation campaign underway in Mogadishu.”
The same image also appeared in an article by the BBC Somali website on 30 October 2022.
In October 2022 two car bomb explosions occurred at the busy Sobe intersection in Mogadishu, killing over a hundred people and 300 wounded, Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud said.
Federation of Somali Journalists (FESOJ) has examined a post on X (formerly Twitter) purportedly claiming to show that Somali young men are lining up to donate blood for the wounded people in the al-Shabab attack on Mogadishu beach on 3 August 2024, and found it to be PARTLY FALSE.
This fact-check was produced by Federation of Somali Journalists (FESOJ) under the African Fact-Checking Incubator programme, with support from PesaCheck, Code for Africa’s fact-checking initiative, and the African Fact-Checking Alliance(AFCA).
