Video shows migrants jumping off moving bus in Algeria, not Germany

“Ghanaians in Germany jumping from the bus which was transporting them to airport for deportation (sic),” reads a post shared in Kenya on the X platform, formerly known as Twitter, on July 23, 2023.

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Screenshot showing the misleading tweet, taken on August 2, 2023

The claim also appeared on Facebook here and here.

The 16-second-long video shows several people successively jumping out of a moving bus through a broken window and running away toward a nearby housing complex.

But the clip was not filmed in Germany.

Escape from Algeria

Using the InVID-WeVerify video verification tool, AFP Fact Check performed reverse image searches on keyframes from the footage.

This led us to a news report (archived here) by the Arabic edition of Russian state broadcaster RT dated July 3, 2023, featuring a screenshot from the same footage. According to the article, it showed immigrants escaping deportation in Algeria.

The RT article embedded a July 2, 2023, tweet from ABC Arabia, an Iraqi news site (archived here).

Written in Arabic, the tweet translates to: “#Algeria..#escape of a group of illegal migrants from #Sub-Saharan Africa and #Sahel (coast) countries while being deported to their countries.”

The incident was also covered by Arabic news sites including Al Arabiya and Al Jazeera (archived here, here and here). The reports say the scene took place in Algeria and that immigrants broke a window, jumped out of a moving bus, and fled.

A car seen in the foreground of the video has a licence plate corresponding to the Algerian registration system (archived here; see also here), with a yellow plate and three sets of numbers. On the right side of the plate, the number 16 represents an Algerian province.

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Screenshot showing the rear licence plate of a car filmed during the incident

Vehicles in Germany (archived here), meanwhile, have plates with both numbers and letters and feature the European Union flag.

Furthermore, reverse image searches suggest that the buildings captured in the clip match the style of the AADL apartments (archived here) built by a Chinese company in Algiers, Algeria's capital.

A search on Google Maps for AADL apartments in Algeria found photos of an estate with a similar design to those in the video, located near the new Douera stadium in Algiers (archived here).

A search on Google for “AADL Douera stadium” found photos (archived here) showing the same buildings in the Getty Images photos archive.

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Screenshot showing the AADL apartments near Douera stadium in Algiers

We were unable to independently verify the identity of the people who jumped off the moving bus.

Sub-saharan migrants in Algeria face violence and expulsion from the country (see reports here and here, archived here and here).