Photographer nabbed shooting fake images of 'Aleppo suffering' in Egypt

BELGRADE - It was destined to be an iconic image: a small girl holding a teddy bear in a white dress marked by blood splotches with the ruins of Aleppo behind her. However, it was also a set-up, shot hundreds of miles away in a different country, with help of a posing child and some paint.

Egypt's Interior Ministry has revealed on its Facebook page that it arrested a group of five people caught in the act of producing images purportedly depicting scenes of suffering in Aleppo that they had planned to pass off as real pictures from Syria.

The ministry said that the residents of Port Said, a city on the Suez Canal, were caught in the middle of their shoot as the 12-year-old star, Ragd, was posing for 21-year-old Mustafa, who told the authorities that he "normally photographed weddings and ceremonies, but had an idea for something else."

"In a conversation with them,...