Video shows old warehouse fire in Dubai, not Iranian strikes on Israel
- Published on March 2, 2026 at 10:15
- 2 min read
- By AFP Middle East & North Africa, AFP Bangladesh
- Translation and adaptation Rasheek MUJIB
Iran retaliated with missile barrages across the Middle East for the killing of its supreme leader during an attack by the United States and Israel on February 28, 2026, but a video circulating in posts claiming it shows an assault on Tel Aviv predates the latest round of fighting. It depicts a warehouse fire in Dubai in November 2025.
"Just in: Iranian Missiles Continue to Hit Is-rael Tel Aviv," reads the caption of a clip shared March 2, 2026 on Facebook.
The video, which shows a plume of thick black smoke rising from a burning building by a highway, accumulated more than 7,400 views.
The same footage spread alongside similar claims, including in Arabic, about an Iranian attack on Tel Aviv as conflict exploded across the Middle East following a joint US-Israel attack on the Islamic republic that killed its supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (archived link).
Iran retaliated by striking Israel and other Gulf countries that host US bases (archived link).
In Israel, an Iranian missile attack killed at least nine people and injured dozens more in the central city of Beit Shemesh, after a death the previous day near Tel Aviv. Three people were also injured on one of the main roads of Jerusalem.
But the video circulating online predates the latest round of conflict.
A reverse image search on Google using keyframes from the clip found it corresponds to footage shared on a United Arab Emirates-based Instagram page called The Dubai Junction on November 25, 2025 (archived link).
The post says the video shows a fire at warehouses in Dubai's industrial Umm Ramool area and credits the footage to a TikTok user who shared it the same day (archived link).
Further keyword searches found a local news site shared similar clips of the fire on X on November 24, 2025, reporting that firefighters tackled the blaze at a paint warehouse (archived link).
The Dubai government's media office said firefighters successfully extinguished the blaze in less than 40 minutes (archived link).
The scene in the circulating video matches Google Street View imagery of Al Rabat Street in Dubai (archived link).
AFP has debunked other misinformation about the Middle East conflict here.
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