Videos from India and Nigeria falsely shared as 'aftermath of Hamas attack in Israel'
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on November 1, 2023 at 06:12
- Updated on November 1, 2023 at 07:39
- 4 min read
- By AFP Thailand
Copyright © AFP 2017-2025. Any commercial use of this content requires a subscription. Click here to find out more.
"Israel war situation today," reads a Burmese-language Facebook post from October 9 which has more than 2,800 shares.
The video shows huge crowds of people packed together in the street, pushing and shoving. It then cuts to a clip of huge fires blazing next to a busy road.
Text superimposed on the video says "Right now in Israel" in Burmese and Portuguese.
Israel says Hamas militants killed 1,400 people, mostly civilians, when they stormed across the border on October 7 in an unprecedented attack. More than 220 hostages were also seized.
More than 8,000 people have been killed in retaliatory Israeli strikes on the territory, many of them children, according to the Hamas health ministry.
The footage circulatedly widely on Facebook in Myanmar, including here, here and here, and in Thailand here and here.
However, the scenes are not related to the conflict.
India festival
A reverse image search and keyword search on Google found a YouTube video which said the crowd footage was filmed at a festival in India.
The video, posted on June 23, is titled "Baripada, ratha yatra 2023" -- a reference to Ratha Yatra celebrations in the city of Baripada in eastern India.
Also known as the chariot festival, Ratha Yatra is one of India's biggest and oldest annual religious festivals, where Hindu devotees pull ornate chariots carrying deities through the streets.
The Ratha Yatra in Baripada, which was celebrated from June to July 2023, is unique for allowing female devotees to pull one of the chariots (archived link).
Below is a screenshot comparison of the video in false posts (left) and in the YouTube video (right):
Google Street View images confirm the video was taken in Baripada (archived link).
Below is a screenshot comparison of the YouTube video (left) to the image from Google Street View (right), with similar features highlighted by AFP:
Kalinga TV -- a broadcaster based in Odisha in eastern India -- also posted a report on YouTube channel on June 21, showing the same chariot at the 1:02 mark as the one in the false video (archived link).
Nigeria oil tanker explosion
A reverse image and keyword search on Google found a clip showing the same scene of fires burning on the side of a road published by Nigerian news outlet TrustTV on July 25 (archived link).
The video is titled: "Ondo tanker explosion: 8 killed while scooping spilled fuel at Ore Benin Expressway."
"The explosion was said to have occurred when the victims rushed to scoop fuel from the tankers, which had skidded off its lane and crashed," the video's caption reads.
Below is a screenshot comparison of the scene as seen in the false video (left) and in the video from TrustTV (right):
Scooping fuel from traffic accidents has resulted in numerous casualties in Nigeria, where the price of petrol doubled since June 1 after President Bola Tinubu ended a subsidy on gasoline, Nigeria's Guardian newspaper reported (archived link).
The scenes in the video also match Google Street View images of the highway in Nigeria's Ondo state (archived link).
Below is a screenshot comparison of the scene as seen in the false video (left) and on Google Street View (right) with the similarities highlighted by AFP:
Is there content that you would like AFP to fact-check? Get in touch.
Contact us
