Yasmeen, the mother of Omar Bilal al-Banna, calls her kids "the candle of my life" on Instagram. I was introduced to her by two photographers, and I verified her identification as Omar's mother by comparing her social media accounts with the information at my disposal. When Omar was slain, he and his elder brother Majd were playing outside. I've seen video evidence of Majd attesting to this. He talks about how the strike struck their neighbor's house in the video, and how Omar was subsequently hit by falling debris. Majd was also hurt. His leg is wrapped in the video, and he appears astonished.

An account on X that supported israel was the first to publish about Omar's passing that I noticed online. A man wearing a grey polo shirt was shown in a video clutching a young child's body that was covered in a white blanket or piece of fabric. Later on, I would find out that this youngster was Omar.

"Hamas is desperate!" said the individual who uploaded the video in the caption that went with it. Falsely claiming that the organization had "released a video showing a dead Palestinian baby," they went on to say that it was designated as a terrorist organization by the UK, israel, and other countries. Wait for the catch, though. It's a toy, not a real infant.

This user said it "exposes how hard the lying and slanderous propaganda arm of Hamas and the Palestinians works". They suggested Hamas accounts had shared and then deleted the video because it wasn't real.

According to X, that post containing the video and false claims has been seen 3.8 million times. The allegations it made were then amplified by the State of Israel's official account on X.

It shared a new post, this time featuring that same video of the child in the white blanket - and then a still from the same video, circling the child's data-face.

In the caption, the account wrote: "Hamas accidentally posted a video of a doll (yes a doll) suggesting that it was a part of casualties caused by an IDF [Israel Defense Forces] attack."

The original photographers and films' source has also been located by other fact-checking groups including Alt News.

I received additional information from both photojournalists confirming that the photo and the video were shot outside the mortuary at Al-Shifa Hospital. The specifics included Omar's relative, the man with the grey shirt, and the circumstances that day in the hospital.

They both unequivocally assured me that the youngster in the photo was a genuine little kid named Omar Bilal al-Banna, not a fake. In order to confirm the child's identification, they also supplied further pictures, which I have compared to the original video footage of Moamen El Halabi.