Old video of building collapse falsely linked to September 2023 Morocco earthquake
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on September 25, 2023 at 09:30
- 2 min read
- By AFP Middle East & North Africa, AFP France, AFP Hong Kong
- Translation and adaptation Tommy WANG
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An old video of a collapsing building has been shared over a thousand times in social media posts that falsely claim it was taken during the deadly September 2023 earthquake that struck near Morocco's tourist hub of Marrakesh. In fact, the clip was taken in December 2022 in a different city, Casablanca. The building seen in the video had been slated for demolition and did not collapse because of an earthquake.
"The moment a building collapsed during the earthquake in Morocco," reads the simplified Chinese caption of a post on Weibo on September 9, 2023.
The accompanying video appears to show a building collapsing onto itself and leaving behind a thick cloud of dust.
The post was shared a day after a magnitude 6.8 earthquake -- Morocco's strongest ever -- struck near its tourist hub Marrakesh, killing nearly 3,000 people, injuring another 5,600 and flattening entire villages.
The clip was viewed more than 12,000 times in similar false posts on social media in various languages, including Arabic, English and Thai.
But the clip is unrelated to the September 2023 earthquake -- the building was in a different Moroccan city and had been marked for demolition before it fell apart in December 2022.
The clip circulating in the false posts includes an Arabic-language caption, which translates as "the moment a building collapsed in Casablanca".
Google keyword searches found the same video was uploaded to YouTube on December 27, 2022 titled: "The collapse of a house in the Mohammadi district of Casablanca" (archived link).
Below are screenshot comparisons of the clip shared in the false posts (left) and the video uploaded on YouTube (right):
The building's collapse was reported by several local media here and here (archived links here and here).
The reports state the building in the Derb Moulay Cherif neighbourhood of Casablanca's Hay Mohammadi district had been evacuated and was slated for demolition since 2017 due to structural instability (archived link).
The deadly earthquake in Morocco has triggered a wave of misinformation, debunked by AFP here and here.
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