IN SHORT: Several Facebook users have posted a photo they claim shows the bodies of protesters killed during the 2025 post-election protests in Tanzania. But the photo was taken at a mass grave in Gaza, Palestine in 2023.
“They sent other people’s children to go and protest in Tanzania while their children are cooling off in the best schools abroad, now look at other people’s children joining their ancestors before their time,” reads the caption to a photo going viral on Facebook.
The photo shows what appear to be bodies laid side by side in a trench and wrapped in blue material.
Tanzania held its general election on 29 October 2025. Protests erupted across the country on the same day as key opposition leaders had been barred from the presidential race.
In response to the protests, the government imposed a curfew and internet restrictions, while police reportedly used tear gas and live ammunition to control the crowd.
According to reports, at least 500 people were killed as protesters clashed with security forces. Other reports suggested that security forces transported some of the bodies to undisclosed locations.
Following the disrupted election, Tanzania’s president Samia Suluhu Hassan blamed migrants for the deadly protests. Hassan also claimed that non-governmental organisations paid young people to join the protests.
“Kenyans who caused trouble in Tanzania during the election day have been buried,” reads another caption to the circulating photo.
But is the photo really of the aftermath of the deadly October protests in Tanzania? We checked.
Photo taken in 2023 in Gaza
Africa Check ran the photo through a reverse image search, which revealed that it was old. The search led us to an article published by the World Socialist Web Site on 29 November 2023 with the headline: “‘Slow death’: Israel weaponizes disease in the Gaza genocide.”
The article includes the same photo, attributing it to Mohammed Dahman of the Associated Press.
It has the caption: “Palestinians pray over bodies of people killed in the Israeli bombardment who were brought from the Shifa hospital before burying them in a mass grave in the town of Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023.”
We found the same photo published on Instagram on 11 July 2024 by the photographer Mohammed Dahman, with an identical caption. The photo was also published, attributed to Dahman, to illustrate “the war in Gaza” by the Associated Press on 6 April 2024. A series of very similar photos showing the same mass grave were published by Reuters news agency on 22 November 2023 under the headline: “‘All the cemeteries are full’: Palestinians buried in a mass grave in Gaza.”
The circulating photo was taken in Gaza in Palestine in 2023. It does not show dead protesters after the October 2025 election in Tanzania.
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