Clip shows Peruvian pilgrimage, not Israelis fleeing war with Iran
- Published on July 4, 2025 at 10:41
- 3 min read
- By AFP Indonesia
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"Blue refugee tents cover the slopes, filled with Israelis fleeing from city bunkers," reads Indonesian-language text on a TikTok video shared on June 25, 2025.
Viewed more than 160,000 times, the video shows an overhead view of crowds moving between densely packed tents in a mountain valley. Its caption claims it shows an Egyptian mountainside.
The video circulated a day after a US-proposed ceasefire brought an end to the Iran-Israel war (archived link).
The arch foes traded devastating missile attacks after Israel launched an unprecedented bombing campaign targeting Iran's nuclear and military facilities. The strikes left more than 900 people dead in Iran and 28 people dead in Israel (archived link).
Governments around the world had evacuated thousands of their nationals caught up in the conflict, organising buses and planes and in some cases assisting people crossing borders on foot (archived link).
The same footage was shared in similar posts elsewhere on Facebook and SnackVideo.
But the video does not show Israeli refugees nor was it filmed in Egypt.
A reverse image search on Google using keyframes from the falsely shared video led to the same footage uploaded on June 19 (archived link).
A keyword search of the video's caption led to an entry on the UNESCO website for the "Pilgrimage to the sanctuary of the Lord of Qoyllurit'i", which was inscribed on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2011 (archived here).
According to the entry, the pilgrimage "combines elements from Catholicism and worship of pre-Hispanic nature deities".
"It begins fifty-eight days after the Christian celebration of Easter Sunday, when 90,000 people from around Cusco travel to the sanctuary, located in Sinakara hollow."
Structures seen in Google Maps satellite imagery of the sanctuary in southern Peru also correspond to buildings visible in the falsely shared footage (archived link).
Video available on Google Maps appearing to show rows of blue tents and scores of pilgrims in June 2025 also matches the falsely shared footage (archived link).
AFP has debunked other false claims about the Iran-Israel war here.
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