Video of England blaze misrepresented as Israel wildfires

Published on May 6, 2025 at 20:36
4 min read
By Bill MCCARTHY, AFP USA

A video is spreading across platforms with claims that it shows wildfires that scorched areas on the outskirts of Jerusalem in 2025. But the clip has been miscaptioned; it shows an abandoned college campus that caught fire in Coventry, United Kingdom.

"Israel Under Fire: Massive Wildfires Rage Across the Region!" says a May 4, 2025 post on X.

The post comes from "@Worldwar_3_", an account that has previously spread disinformation about Israel's war with Hamas.

Screenshot from X taken May 5, 2025

Similar posts rocketed across X and other platforms such as Threads after bushfires broke out along the main Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway April 30 and swept through wooded areas outside Jerusalem, prompting road closures, evacuations and a declaration of emergency from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Israeli authorities said May 1 that responders had brought the blazes -- described as the largest fire the country had seen in a decade -- mostly under control.

But the video circulating online, which compiles three shots of a building engulfed in flames as firefighters work to douse the blaze, was captured far from Israel.

Reverse image searches surfaced matching visuals -- and additional photos and footage of the same buildings -- in posts describing the scene as a fire that ignited April 29 in Coventry, United Kingdom (archived here, here, here, here and here).

British news organizations including the BBC and the Sun also published pictures of the blaze (archived here and here).

The fire erupted in the evening at Coventry College's derelict Henley Road campus, according to the college and the West Midlands Fire Service, which dispatched fifteen crews to extinguish the inferno (archived here and here). No injuries or casualties were reported, the fire service said.

The West Midlands Police announced a day later that officers had arrested two teenage boys on suspicion of arson in the incident (archived here).

Google Street View and Google Earth satellite imagery place the buildings in Coventry, confirming the video does not show Israel (archived here and here).