Houla massacre picture mistake [View all]

[dipsydoodle]

Last weekend the news agenda was dominated by reports from Syria of more than 100 people being massacred in the town of Houla.

For about 90 minutes on Sunday, the BBC News website illustrated its story about what had happened with a picture of shrouded bodies in neat rows, with a child jumping over one of the rows.

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Except that it's not from this incident at all, but was taken almost a decade earlier, in Iraq, by professional photographer Marco Di Lauro, who works for Getty Images.

The picture was first spotted as it circulated on Twitter, the social networking site, on Sunday, apparently sourced from activists in Syria, triggering our process for checking user-generated content.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2012/05/houla_massacre_picture_mistake.html