Yom Kippur war inaccuracies persist in BBC archive content

Inaccurate claims relating to the Yom Kippur war have still stand.

Four years ago we pointed out that an article concerning the Yom Kippur War (that is still available online in the BBC’s ‘On This Day’ archive under the date October 6th 1973) tells audiences in both its text and in a photo caption that:

Both sides have accused each other of firing the first shots, but UN observers have reported seeing Egyptian and Syrian troops crossing into Israeli-held territory.” [emphasis added]

That misleading forty-four year-old claim has still not been amended.

The same report also includes an inaccurate portrayal of the number of Israeli casualties in that war.

“Most hostilities ended on 22 October. Both sides suffered heavy losses. An estimated 8,500 Syrian and Egyptian soldiers died, while Israel lost about 6,000.”

As was also noted here four years ago, while various sources give slightly differing figures for Israeli casualties during the Yom Kippur War, “none of them reaches even half of the 6,000 claimed in this BBC article and others”.

At the time the BBC did amend one of the articles citing the inaccurate casualty figures but this archive report remains uncorrected, as does a separate backgrounder.

 

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