On August 28th the BBC News website published a report by Mallory Moench titled “Israeli strikes kill six Syrian troops, Syria says”. The caption to the photograph illustrating that report reads:
“A view of an Israeli army checkpoint in Damascus, Syria on 27 August”
That photograph in fact shows Mount Hermon rather than Damascus but clearly either nobody at the BBC News website knows that there are no ‘Israeli army checkpoints’ in the Syrian capital or nobody could be bothered to fact check the caption before promoting that disinformation. CAMERA UK has submitted a complaint to the BBC.
As is often the case in BBC reporting on alleged Israeli operations in Syria, the article itself is based on Syrian regime reports relating to events on August 26th and 27th in the Kiswah area south of Damascus.
“Israeli drone strikes near Damascus have killed six Syrian soldiers, Syria’s government said, among a series of reported attacks this week.
Syria’s foreign ministry condemned Tuesday’s strike as a violation of international law and a breach of its sovereignty.
After more strikes on Wednesday, Israeli forces carried out an airborne landing at a former military site in the area, international and Syrian state media report. Reports differ on what forces did and how long they stayed for.”
Regarding the August 26th events, readers are later told that:
“Tuesday’s attack happened while Syrian troops were attempting to deal with “surveillance and eavesdropping devices” discovered during a field tour near al-Kiswah, Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reports.”
The August 27th events are portrayed as follows:
“Further air strikes followed on Wednesday, taking place around 10km (six miles) from where Syria’s interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa was attending the Damascus International Fair, SOHR reported.
Few details were available on the landing by Israeli forces at the former military site, which was reported on Wednesday night.
SANA reported that Israeli aircraft launched several raids, followed by an airdrop, “the details of which are yet to be determined”.
A Syrian military source told Al Jazeera the operation included dozens of soldiers with search equipment who stayed at the site for more than two hours.
Two Syrian army sources told Reuters that troops conducted the landing, but withdrew after, with no more details.”
Despite the existence of a 2017 BBC report on the topic, Moench did not inform her readers that the “former military site” near Kiswah had been used by Iranian forces and Hizballah before the fall of the Assad regime last December.
On the afternoon of August 29th the IDF confirmed that operations had taken place.
“In a series of overnight raids in southern Syria over the past few days, IDF troops arrested several suspects involved in promoting terrorist activity against Israeli forces, the military confirmed on Friday.
Soldiers from the 226th Brigade of the 210th Division, operating in coordination with Unit 504 field investigators, detained individuals suspected of planning attacks targeting IDF personnel. Weapons were uncovered during searches conducted in multiple locations.”
To date, Moench’s report has not been updated to include that information. It does however tell BBC audiences about a previous incident:
“In July, Israel bombed Syrian government forces around Suweida in the country’s south as the army entered the predominantly Druze city following deadly sectarian clashes.
Israel’s prime minister said he had ordered strikes on forces and weapons because the government “intended to use [them] against the Druze”. Syria condemned the July attacks, which it said had resulted in deaths of members of the armed forces and civilians.”
Remarkably, Moench’s account of the events in the Suweida region in July 2025 completely erases from audience view the massacres and abductions of Druze and Christian residents of that area – and the involvement of Syrian regime forces.
Update:
Two days after the submission of our complaint, we received the following response from the BBC:
“I have looked carefully at your message and the report to which it refers. I understand you were concerned about the caption for the main photo.
It was a picture of the UN peacekeepers’ observation post on Mount Hermon, in the Golan Heights, and we described it as “an Israeli checkpoint in Damascus”.
We have now changed the photo caption to: A view of the UN peacekeepers’ post on Mount Hermon in the Golan Heights.
We have also added this footnote to the report: Correction, 1 September: A previous version of this article included a photo with an incorrect caption: “A view of an Israeli army checkpoint in Damascus”. This has now been corrected to say: ” A view of the UN peacekeepers’ post on Mount Hermon in the Golan Heights”.
Thank you for drawing this to our attention. Mistakes like this should not happen and are usually picked up by senior editors. However, in a busy newsroom I am afraid sometimes errors occur. We aim to rectify these as quickly as possible, as we have done here.”
Footnote:
Corrected photo caption:
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