With US President Donald Trump declaring the ceasefire “over”, the Iran war has come into focus again. On Wednesday, social media users began circulating videos depicting new attacks by Iran.
At least one of those videos has nothing to do with the conflict.
Video goes viral again with false claims
Claim:user posting this video on xWith over 288,000 views at the time of writing, it claims it shows a “highly classified” US facility being set on fire after a retaliatory strike by Iran.
DW Fact Check: False
Appeared multiple times on Video X (e.g. Here) with the same claim on Wednesday, garnering thousands of views.
But the video shows a fire that broke out in a market in St. Petersburg, Russia in December.
We see large clouds rising from a burning building and firefighters and other people gathering in front. The surrounding area consists of streets filled with cars and tall buildings.
Reverse image search shows that this video has been circulated before MayThe Iran war was also misrepresented.
The same video has been shared with false claims that it shows several other scenarios Iran’s attack on Dubai And American attack on Kuwait.
This video went viral earlier on the same X accountIt is being claimed that it shows an attack by Hezbollah on a secret base in Israel.
It was posted with false claims on social media platforms (Instagram, Facebook And youtubefor example) and in many languages (including Arabic, Türkiye, Indonesian And Spanish).
Reverse image search also finds posts (such as Here) claiming that the video shows the fire that broke out in St. Petersburg on December 10.
Visual cues, such as the round structure above the entrance or the triangular shapes below the main roof, overlap with the video (Here And Here) taken from different perspectives of the same event in December.
Thus we can geolocate the video as shown Pravoberetsky Market in St. Petersburg (59.904505, 30.469624).
Edited by: M Gagnon