A claim describing a miracle after a 5-year-old child was rescued 112 hours after the February 06 earthquake in Turkey, citing a channel as a source, has gone viral on the Internet.
What is written in the claim?
The posts circulating on the internet says, A 5 Year Old was Stuck Under Rubble for 112 Hours, They Asked The Child How did you not become hungry when trapped? The Child Replied: “A person wearing white would come occasionally to feed me and give me water”
See some of the posts that circulated on Facebook here, here and here. View archived versions of posts here, here and here.
Check out a video circulating on YouTube making the same claim here. View archived versions of the video here.
Fact Check
According to the Rumor Scanner’s investigation, The story of the 5-year-old child’s miracle interview on Turkey’s A Haber channel is not correct, rather based on a Twitter post, the claim was spread on the Internet and later that tweet was also deleted.
On February 6th, a devastating earthquake in southern Turkey and northern Syria was reported in the media. Turkey’s recent earthquake claims on social media that a five-year-old child described a miracle on a Turkish channel after being rescued 112 hours later.
At the beginning of the investigation in this regard, we saw many people sharing a screenshot of a tweet of a Twitter account on Facebook by searching for keywords in different languages.
In an Arabic tweet published on February 11, the person from the Twitter account named ‘Saad Türkmen’ wrote, “A short while ago, the Turkish haber channel met a 5-year-old boy who just got out of the rubble after 112 hours. They asked him, “Didn’t you starve all these hours?” He said: “Every once in a while, a person dressed in white would come to me & feed me & give me water & then go!” (Translated)
Mr. Saad mentioned in the tweet that he saw the incident on a channel called ‘A Haber’ a short while ago, i.e. on February 11 (the day he tweeted).
Moreover, he mentioned about the rescue of the child after 112 hours. As the earthquake struck shortly after 4 a.m. on February 6 in Turkey, 112 hours should have occurred on February 11.
Based on this information, no mention of such incident was found after monitoring the videos and reports published on all the social media accounts of the channel including the website of the Turkish media ‘A Haber’ on February 11.
Subsequently, the Rumor Scanner team attempted to contact ‘A Haber’ authorities multiple times through multiple mediums. But they were not interested in commenting on the matter.
In addition to ‘A Haber’, we have searched manuals and keyword searches to find out about this incident in other Turkish and international media. But we have not found any information in the media about such an incident with a child.
During this investigation, we could not find the tweet by clicking on the tweet link on February 15. That is, the tweet has been deleted.
The Rumor Scanner team also contacted multiple fact-checking organizations in Turkey to find out about this. They told Rumor Scanner that they are not aware of any such incident.
That is, the information spread around the tweet is baseless. Moreover, since the tweet has also been deleted, the information appears to be rumors.
Bottom Line
On February 6, a terrible earthquake occurred in Turkey. In view of this, it is being claimed that “a five-year-old child described a miraculous incident after being rescued after 112 hours” citing Turkey’s “A Haber” channel. But investigation revealed that the tweet, which was said to be the origin of the viral posts, was later deleted. No mention of such an incident was found in ‘A Haber’ channel either. Upon overall investigation and analysis, this claim appears to be baseless.
That is, A claim describing a miracle after a 5-year-old child was rescued two hours after the February 06 earthquake in Turkey has gone viral on the Internet; which is false.
Source
- Rumor Scanner own analysis
- CBS NEWS: 2nd little girl pulled alive from Turkey’s earthquake devastation
- A Haber: Website