Russian embassy tweets about Syria, uses picture of Command & Conquer The Russian Embassy’s decision to illustrate news about chemical weapons in Syria with a screenshot from the PC game Command & […]

The Russian Embassy’s decision to illustrate news about chemical weapons in Syria with a screenshot from the PC game Command & Conquer: Generals is causing bemused confusion.

The remarkably low res image of three green (and obviously fake) army trucks, was used with a tweet saying “Extremists near Aleppo receive several truckloads of chemical ammo.”

One of the trucks even has a biohazard symbol on the back.

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. @mod_russia: Extremists near Aleppo received several truckloads of chemical ammo. pic.twitter.com/scCEMXRvwH — Russian Embassy, UK (@RussianEmbassy) May 12, 2016

The UK embassy added the text “used for illustration purposes only” to the screenshot.

It is the first image that shows up at the top of a Google search for the term “bomb truck”.

Inside Aleppo

Aleppo has seen heavy fighting during the ongoing Syrian civil war, with Russian planes assisting the Assad regime in resuming bombings of certain neighbourhoods after a recent truce expired yesterday.

The city, which has been described as “Syria’s Stalingrad”, is the largest in the country and remains divided between regime forces and opposition rebels four years after the war began.

People have been fighting in Syria for five years. More than a quarter of a million people have died.

In Command and Conquer

The PC game sees the US and China teaming up to take on the Global Liberation Army, a borderless terrorist organisation.

Not the first time

The Russian Embassy appears to enjoy illustrating horrifying news events with pop culture references.

The image used in this tweet is a promotional picture from a 2009 Norwegian zombie movie Dead Snow.

The latest image prompted people to tweet a raft of screenshots at the Russian embassy account, pointing out that they had noticed worrying evidence of rebel activity in everything from Minecraft to Mario:

https://twitter.com/dsic/status/730766353532096513

https://twitter.com/01sak_/status/730760871949918210

https://twitter.com/EliteRaspberrie/status/730835312839172096

https://twitter.com/EliteRaspberrie/status/730844911487074304

https://twitter.com/turtlestudio/status/730815476398456834