Old Saudi Arabia clip mischaracterized as Libya flash flood
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on September 14, 2023 at 23:10
- 3 min read
- By Natalie WADE, AFP USA
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"TRAGIC: Massive flood (sic) have hit Libya, and reportedly, more than 5300 people have been confirmed dead so far - Death toll could reach above 10,000 say officials," says a September 13, 2023 Facebook post accompanying the clip.
The footage shows water rushing down a stream as vehicles maneuver to dodge a large wave that nearly submerges a bridge.
Several other posts sharing the video circulated on platforms such as TikTok and X, formerly known as Twitter.
The global aid effort for Libya has intensified after a flash flood killed thousands of people, with thousands more missing. The September 10 disaster, caused by Storm Daniel, resulted in a stormwater surge that burst two upstream river dams, laying to waste regions of the Mediterranean coastal city of Derna.
But the footage circulating online is unrelated to Libya.
A Yandex reverse image search surfaced several versions of the video shared on YouTube in 2016 (archived here and here). Arabic captions indicate the footage was shot in Wadi Al Farshah village in Saudi Arabia.
Using keyword searches, AFP found Saudi Arabian newspaper Azal published the video April 8, 2016 on Facebook (archived here). Another media outlet, Daralakhbar.com, published the same footage the next day (archived here).
Both reported the clip showed a flood in Wadi Al Farshah.
When natural disasters strike, old or manipulated videos often circulate online. AFP has debunked similar posts about wildfires on the Hawaiian island of Maui, an earthquake in Morocco and hurricanes in the US states of California and Florida.
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