Ukraine explosion clip misrepresented as Mideast conflict
- Published on July 9, 2025 at 06:54
- 2 min read
- By AFP Indonesia
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"Seconds before Iran's missile hit Israeli city," reads an Indonesian-language TikTok post shared on June 28, 2025.
The short video shows an explosion at night near a building complex.
The video also surfaced on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, and was shared in posts written in English, Arabic and Azerbaijani.
The Middle East adversaries traded devastating missile attacks after Israel launched an unprecedented bombing campaign targeting Iran's nuclear and military facilities (archived link).
The strikes left more than 900 people dead in Iran and 28 people dead in Israel. A ceasefire announced on June 24 ended the war (archived link).
A reverse image search of keyframes on Google found a higher quality version of the video uploaded on the website ViralHog (archived link).
"A Shahed drone, launched by Russian forces, strikes a residential high-rise building in Kyiv, Ukraine. The video captures the exact moment of impact and explosion," reads its caption which states the clip was filmed June 9, 2025.
The reverse search also yielded pages that show a similar looking apartment complex in Ukraine (archived here and here).
A picture of a building in Kyiv uploaded by a Ukraine-based real estate company matches elements in the circulating clip including the yellow fence around the park and an entrance door (archived link).
AFP has debunked other false claims about the Iran-Israel war here.
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