Clip of burning building from Nepal protests, not Israeli airstrike
- Published on September 19, 2025 at 10:42
- Updated on September 19, 2025 at 10:43
- 3 min read
- By Rimal FARRUKH, AFP Pakistan
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"Israel's airstrike on Hamas office in Qatar. The echoes of explosions in Doha as the senior leadership of Hamas targeted," reads the Urdu-language caption of a Facebook video shared September 10, 2025.
The clip, which racked up more than 3,600 views, shows the top floor of a building on fire and thick black smoke wafting over nearby high-rises.
It circulated after a deadly Israeli strike on the Qatari capital on September 9 that targeted Hamas leaders who had gathered to discuss a new US ceasefire proposal to end the war in Gaza (archived link). Five Hamas members and a Qatari security officer were killed.
Qatar has played a pivotal role in mediating between Israel and Hamas on ending the war and securing the release of hostages held by Palestinian militants since the October 2023 attack that resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel's retaliatory campaign has killed at least 65,141 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to figures from the territory's health ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.
The footage also spread in similar posts elsewhere on Facebook as world leaders, including US President Donald Trump, sharply criticised the strike in Doha (archived link).
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his government assumes "full responsibility" for the attack "because we believe that terrorists should not be given a haven".
But the circulating video does not show the strike's aftermath.
A reverse image search on Google using keyframes from the falsely shared video led to the same footage shared September 9 on Instagram (archived link).
The caption reads: "Protesters Torch Nepal’s Largest Media House, Kantipur Publications".
AFP also traced the clip to the verified Facebook page of Sri Lankan news aggregator Newswire and a longer video on the Encyclopedia Britannica website, which credited the footage to the EyePress and Reuters agencies (archived here and here).
The protests in Nepal that toppled the Himalayan nation's government began on September 8, sparked by a ban on social media that fed into long-standing economic woes (archived link).
The protests quickly escalated, with parliament and key government buildings torched. According to government figures, at least 73 people were killed in two days of protests -- the worst unrest since the end of a decade-long civil war and the abolition of the monarchy in 2008.
The Kantipur Media Group's building in Kathmandu was also damaged, although the broadcaster returned to air from a makeshift studio and its newspaper resumed online (archived link).
The misrepresented video corresponds to photos of the building shared on Google Maps (archived link).
User-submitted photos of the burned-out building are also visible on Google Maps (archived here and here).
Statements from press freedom groups about the Kantipur Media Group building fire include similar visuals (archived here and here).
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