Photo of exploded toilet in Hong Kong falsely linked to Lebanon pager blasts

"The Lebanese Ministry of Health reported that 300 people were injured in radio explosions and nine others died," read an X post from September 19 written in traditional Chinese characters.

"Hezbollah operatives keep exploding across Lebanon and reporters saw militants frantically removing batteries from all radios and throwing them into trash cans and toilets."

The post, which attracted more than 100,000 views, showed a photo of a charred lavatory with a smashed seat and debris scattered on the floor.

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Screenshot of the false X post, captured on September 24, 2024

The photo spread online in languages including English, Hebrew and Hindi and in an X post from former French MP Meyer Habib.

Hundreds of pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah exploded on September 17 and 18 in coordinated blasts widely attributed to Israel (archived link). 

The explosions killed 39 people and wounded almost 3,000.

Hezbollah has traded almost daily cross-border fire with Israel since Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel which triggered the war in the Gaza Strip. 

The unprecedented attack resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures that include hostages killed in captivity.

Of the 251 hostages seized by militants, 97 are still held in Gaza, including 33 the Israeli military says are dead.

Israel's retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 41,495 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures provided by the Hamas-run territory's health ministry.

The UN has described the figures as reliable.

However, this photo is unrelated to the pager explosions in Lebanon.

Hong Kong toilet blast

A reverse image search on Google found the photo published by the South China Morning Post (SCMP) newspaper on January 28, 2020 (archived link).

The photo is captioned: "A suspected improvised explosive device destroyed a public toilet at the King George V Memorial Park on Jordan Road in West Kowloon on January 27".

A cleaner discovered the public toilet on fire at the park in Hong Kong's Jordan district. No injuries were reported, the SCMP said.

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The photo published in January 2020 by the South China Morning Post

"A police source said the case, which has been classified as arson, was believed to have been the result of an improvised incendiary device," the report said.

Hong Kong police confirmed to AFP on September 26 that the photo shows an arson incident in Jordan in 2020.

A string of explosions and bomb plots targeting public facilities in Hong Kong were linked to groups calling for shutdowns of the China-Hong Kong border during the Covid-19 pandemic and groups connected to the city's 2019 pro-democracy demonstrations (archived links here, here and here).

Hong Kong news site HK01 published similar photos from the scene of the toilet explosion (archived link).