Viral Photo of Crying Father And Daughter is From Iraq, Not Afghanistan
The Claim
A viral photo showing a distraught father running with a baby girl in his arms was taken in Afghanistan this year.
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In late August, social media users circulated the image on Facebook, days after the Taliban took over Afghanistan. It’s unclear who first shared the image and associated the context with the events unfolding in Afghanistan. The photo contains the words “Pray for Afghanistan” overlayed in several posts.
Misbar’s Analysis
MENA: The circulating photo does not depict the current crisis in Afghanistan. It was taken in 2017 by Reuters photographer Goran Tomasevic, who was in Iraq to capture the tension between Iraqi soldiers and Islamic State-controlled forces.
Tomasevic, took the image on March 4, 2017, in Mosul, a major city just north of Iraq’s capital. "Both screaming in terror, a father and the young daughter he cradled in his arm fled through the rubble-strewn streets of Wadi Hajar, transformed in a flash into a battleground between Islamic State fighters and Iraqi special forces,” Tomasevic’s caption reads.
While on the scene, Tomasevic took several photos of the man and his daughter.
The photo currently circulating is inaccurately labeled, but there are numerous reports and depictions of strife coming out of the crisis in Afghanistan. The country fell to the Taliban swiftly, initiating desperate evacuation attempts by Afghans and Americans. Large crowds of Afghans, for example, who tried to flee Kabul could be seen from a distance as far as from satellites in space.
There were other striking reports, including an image that showed an Afghan child sleeping under a U.S. military uniform to keep warm during evacuations. Another harrowing report came from a US representative whose office released an audibly tearful call from an American woman stuck in Afghanistan.
