CCTV footage of gunmen’s car exploding from Ecuador, not S. Africa
- Published on September 13, 2023 at 10:55
- 2 min read
- By Tendai DUBE, AFP South Africa
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“Hitmen opened fire on a house in Alex, one of them forgot to throw his grenade," read a post on X (formerly Twitter) which features a 50-second clip.
The black-and-white CCTV video shows several assailants in a street opening fire towards a wall, but the target is outside of the camera view. The group then jumps into a car and drives off. Just as the taillights are about to disappear, the car appears to explode.
Alex, short for Alexandra, is a densely populated township in the north of Johannesburg, South Africa. Recent local reports have highlighted it as a crime hotspot (archived here and here).
The video has also been shared on Facebook including here and here.
Some users commenting on the X post seemed to believe the incident took place in South Africa while others said it could not have happened there.
However, the footage was not recorded in South Africa’s Alexandra township but in South America.
La Concordia culprits
Some X users wrote that they had seen the video in relation to Ecuador.
A keyword search for “Ecuador hand grenade” on Google confirmed that the incident occurred in the town of La Concordia in Ecuador.
Ecuadorian media reported on the security video on September 4, 2023 -- two days after the CCTV timestamp (archived here).
Reports said social media was awash with rumours that the assailants possibly wanted to throw a grenade or a stick of dynamite but in the rush, one of them accidentally took it into the car.
Gustavo Játiva, deputy chief of the Santo Domingo police subzone, told media in Spanish that the explosive device was thrown from the vehicle and after checking hospitals it appeared the suspects were not harmed (archived here).
As reported by AFP, Ecuador is enduring a surge in violence as rival cocaine trafficking gangs fight over turf and supply routes (archived here).
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