Video showing 2015 explosion in Yemen falsely shared as US airstrikes in 2025

“The US military continued to attack military targets of Huthi terrorists across Yemen tonight,” reads the Facebook post published on March 17, 2025.

The post adds: “Yemen is reporting 30-50 deaths in the attacks so far. The number of injured is likely over 100.”

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Screenshot of the false Facebook post, taken on March 25, 2025

The account, based in South Africa, has previously shared false claims about the Middle East.

The 10-second clip depicts a white ball falling through the night sky, succeeded by a series of bright explosions.

The video was also shared in Arabic (and debunked by AFP Fact Check here) a day after the United States launched airstrikes against Yemen’s Huthis on March 15, 2025 (archived here).

Officials in Yemen said 53 people were killed, including senior Huthi leaders.

Another person was killed and more than a dozen injured in a separate US airstrike on the capital, Sanaa, on March 24, 2025 (archived here).

Earlier this month, the Huthis threatened to resume attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden over Israel’s aid blockade on Gaza, triggering the first US attacks on Yemen since President Donald Trump took office in January.

Israel’s military said it had intercepted a missile launched from Yemen on March 23, 2025, with Huthi rebels later claiming responsibility (archived here).

However, the video circulating online does not show US airstrikes on Yemen in 2025.

Old video

A reverse video search of keyframes from the footage led to clips published here and here on YouTube in 2015 (archived here and here).

“A huge explosion in Fajj Attan, Operation Decisive Storm, from another angle, 2015,” reads one of the YouTube captions. Faj Attan, also spelt Fag Attan on Google Maps, is a residential area of Yemen’s capital Sanaa.

Operation Decisive Storm was a three-week military campaign by the Saudi-led Arab coalition forces to prevent Iran from taking control of all of Yemen. The campaign ended in April 2015 (archived here).

A Yemeni news site published the same footage on March 30, 2015 (archived here).

Comparison screenshots showed that the footage published in 2015 and 2025 is the same.

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Screenshots of the 2015 explosion footage published by Nabaa Aden News Agency (left) matched with the footage circulating in 2025 (right)

News channel Al Jazeera Mubasher also published a longer version of the video on the same day (archived here).

Both media outlets said the footage depicted massive explosions following the targeting of a weapons depot in Sanaa by “Operation Decisive Storm” coalition aircraft.

On the night the footage was filmed, the Yemeni capital was subjected to the most intense airstrikes since the coalition forces had started bombing Huthi positions.

Yemen has been embroiled in a war since 2014 between Huthi rebels and pro-government forces (archived here). 

The war escalated with the intervention of Saudi Arabia, which led a military coalition of nine Arab countries on March 26, 2015, in support of the internationally recognised government. 

The military operation at that time caused significant damage to the military capabilities of the Iran-backed Huthis, who control large parts of Yemen.