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The viral image below purports to show three TV screenshots of the same photo of a bomb, with the source of the being attributed to three different sources:

enter image description here

First image: Ukrainian Channel 5. The text translates to "Russia bombs".

Second image: Russian RUSSIA24. The text translates to "Ukrainian chastisers bombed their citizens".

Third image: Aljazeera: Israel launches airstrikes in Gaza.

What is the true origin of this photo? Additionally, are any of the news report screenshots genuine?

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    A reminder to commenters: If you would like to share your pithy gibes about Russian politics, please add your Twitter handle to your user profile...
    – Oddthinking
    Jul 9, 2015 at 12:42
  • I find it funny that the Ukrainian news says is was Russians and the Russian news says it was Ukrainians.
    – user11643
    Jul 9, 2015 at 23:08
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    @fredsbend it's everyday here in Russia. In old times that was between USSR and USA-EUROPE
    – kandi
    Jul 10, 2015 at 6:28
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    @danpetruk: Can you explain why you created this bounty? Is it to award the current answer or would you like a more detailed answer? Jul 11, 2015 at 8:55
  • It's a 9M528 which is fired form a launch vehicle called a smerch
    – user27235
    Jul 23, 2015 at 19:52

2 Answers 2

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The original photo appears to have been posted by Ukrainian soldier Andrew Zaharov on his Facebook photo album. as it predates the articles from any of the news sources below.

enter image description here

The initial hit for this image was carried out by cropping the image with Photoshop, then performing a reverse image search, which resulted in a hit to this Ukrainian news site, which has additional images of the truck which was hit by the missile. The site also mirrored Zaharov's photo above.

Google Translate of the page has the following information:

Ukrainian security officials, who are near the village of Dmitrovka Donetsk region were fired from a Russian "Hurricane." Fortunately, one of the rockets that hit in the staff car, did not explode.

Therefore, the original photo in this image appears to be an Ukrainian military truck that was hit by a Russian missile, at least according to the news page. The missile is used by both the Russian and Ukrainian militaries but not by Israel, so it is clear at least that the final instance of the missile being labelled as Israeli is false.

Furthermore, attempting Google searches for the alleged "headlines" on the 3 images did not yield the original news articles which allegedly had their screenshots taken, but instead yielded the meme-image itself. This, coupled with the fact that all 3 of the images had exactly the same size, position and colour profile made the origin of the image extremely suspicious.

Ukrainian: Росія завдає удар

Russian: Россия 24 Украинские каратели обстреляли своих граждан

English: al jazeera "war on gaza" "israel launches airstrikes"

From this, we can infer that it is likely that the creator of this image faked the "headlines" for each of the images.

While we can conclusively find that the truck was an Ukrainian vehicle (from an independent report by Reuters courtesy of Anixx's answer), it will unfortunately be impossible to determine the actual provenance of the missile. Both militaries use the exact same missile model (BM-27 Uragan), and both countries' media sources deny firing the missile in a mirror of the MH17 shootdown tragedy.

Russian source (Google translate)

During shelling Russian positions Ukrainian troops soldiers under Dmitrijevka 220-millimeter rockets Russian "Hurricane" has broken Ukrainian staff car and did not explode. This is reported by users of social network Facebook.

Ukrainian source (Google translate)

Near the village of Dmitrovka in Luhansk Russian rocket "Hurricane" has broken Ukrainian staff car and did not explode.

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  • Here is a higher resolution version of this image: whitelinefirm.nl/2014/09/18/click-see-picdump-xxl-edition-2/… Jul 9, 2015 at 21:07
  • It is unfortunately not conclusive who's missile is this. Ukrainian or Russian?
    – Jose Luis
    Jul 10, 2015 at 8:50
  • A reverse image search on my side lead to the first discussed reddit on 2014-09-12, where some guy "claims" the rocket launcher is a BM-30 Smearch and the missile a 9M55K: reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/2g4sjk/…
    – ikaerom
    Jul 11, 2015 at 13:07
  • @Moreaki I did find that page while researching this answer, although I didn't cite it as I didn't find it sufficiently authoritative. All of the news sources seemed to identify it as a BM-27 Uragan.
    – March Ho
    Jul 11, 2015 at 13:14
  • The diameter seems to make it a rocket fired from a BM-30.
    – jjack
    Jul 27, 2015 at 20:21
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This is a Soviet truck, ZiL-131:

enter image description here enter image description here

which is very unlikely to be used in Palestine.

So the claim it is from Palestine is wrong. The bouth Russian and Ukrainian media claimed the truck to be Ukrainian, but attribute the strike differently, Ukrainian sources say it was hit by a Russian missle, while some Russian sources say it was mistakenly hit by the Ukrainians themselves. The incident had been reported by other agencies, such as Reuters as well (with a photo by Reuters own correspondent David Mdzinarishvili included).

The incident happened near Dmitrovka at the base of the 12th batallion of territorial defense 12 September 2014.

At least in Russia and Ukraine the incident had been widely reported, but the alleged screenshots from the media outlets seem to be faked as thorough explained in the other answer, possibly with satirical purposes to expose the propaganda techniques in modern media.

enter image description here enter image description here

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    Why is the downvote?
    – Anixx
    Jul 11, 2015 at 10:07
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    We are looking for definitive answers, not "In my opnion, it looks a little like the toy, which, in my opinion, would never get exported to Palestine."
    – Oddthinking
    Jul 11, 2015 at 10:29
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    @Oddthinking it is quite evident that the truck is ZiL-131 and the toy is only for illustration.
    – Anixx
    Jul 11, 2015 at 10:37
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    Do you have any source that conclusively identifies the truck as a ZIL 131? The Wikipedia page seems to mention that it "has the same equipment" (not sure what that means) as a number of other different truck models.
    – March Ho
    Jul 11, 2015 at 12:11
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    Russia is well-known for exporting military equipment. I would not be surprised to find a ZiL-131 in service anywhere in the world.
    – Mark
    Mar 25, 2020 at 21:05

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