GAA officer repeats Russian claims of ‘fake’ hospital bombing victim

A Moscow-based committee member of Gaelic Games Europe has described an image of a woman injured in the recent bombing of a Ukrainian hospital as “faked”.

Three people were killed and more wounded when Russian forces bombed a hospital in Mariupol on Wednesday, which Ukrainian authorities said had been a functioning maternity hospital.

The Russian defence ministry later sought to claim the explosions that damaged the hospital were a “staged provocation” to smear Russia. While the Russian embassy in London claimed photos and footage of a pregnant woman at the scene of the bombing were staged by a beauty blogger.

The claim about the beauty blogger was repeated on Twitter by Alan Moore, an Irish man in Moscow, who holds a volunteer committee position with the GAA's European governing body.

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“The girl being carried from the rubble is a blogger who came to the hospital for a ‘shoot’,” Mr Moore said in a post on Twitter.

In another tweet he referenced “the faked maternity hospital victim”, adding “this has to be the worst time to want to believe in news reporting”.

In response to queries about the social media posts, Mr Moore told The Irish Times: “War has to stop, nobody wants war, nobody should die for oil, for politics . . . War is wrong, people need to start speaking.”

He said he did not wish to comment specifically on his tweets regarding the hospital bombing.

Mr Moore is the public relations officer of Gaelic Games Europe, the governing body for GAA clubs in Europe outside of Ireland and Britain.

He is also listed as the secretary of Moscow Shamrocks GAA club. He joined the club in 2015, and served as chairman between 2017 and 2019, according to the club’s website.

On Friday, Mr Moore had removed a reference to his committee position in Gaelic Games Europe from his Twitter bio.

A spokesman for the GAA said Mr Moore’s comments on social media were made “in a personal capacity and do not reflect the views of the GAA”.

Twitter has since removed the social media posts by the Russian embassy in London, which claimed footage of the aftermath of the bombing had been faked. The embassy had claimed a beauty blogger had “played” the role of a pregnant woman in two photos, including one showing her standing amid rubble with blood on her face.

The social media company said the embassy’s tweets had been removed as they violated the platform’s rules around the denial of violent events.