Riyadh highway fire footage misrepresented as strike on US embassy
- Published on March 4, 2026 at 22:25
- 3 min read
- By Bill MCCARTHY, AFP USA
An attack by two drones sparked a small fire at the US embassy in Saudi Arabia as Iran retaliates across the Gulf after US-Israeli strikes killed its supreme leader, but a video spread widely across platforms is unrelated to the escalating war in the Middle East. The clip has been online since at least early February 2026, and AFP geolocated it to a Riyadh highway kilometers from the embassy.
"BREAKING: MASSIVE EXPLOSION AT US EMBASSY RIYADH," says a March 2, 2026 post on X from Spencer Hakimian, a New York hedge fund manager whom AFP has previously fact-checked for spreading misinformation.
The post, which shows video of raging flames and a massive plume of smoke stalling traffic on a freeway, was amplified by Bret Baier, chief political anchor for Fox News. "Fortunately no injuries," the cable TV network anchor wrote in a since-deleted post to his 1.7 million followers on X.
Similar posts spread in multiple languages across X, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok -- and also in some online articles -- after a Saudi defense ministry spokesman said two drones hit the US embassy in Riyadh on March 3 and ignited a small fire. The embassy later confirmed the attack.
Iran has pressed on with retaliatory attacks in the war engulfing the Middle East, which began February 28 when the United States and Israel targeted the country with strikes that killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, its hardline spiritual guide and top political authority since 1989.
But the clip shared by Hakimian, Baier and others is unrelated to the blast on the embassy in Riyadh.
Reverse image searches found the same footage circulating on social media as early as February 6, 2026, before the outbreak of the war (archived here, here and here). Comments on the posts described a fuel tanker that caught fire, with some suggesting the video was a year or several years old.
AFP could not independently verify the origin of the footage or cause of the fire.
However, by reviewing dashcam footage uploaded to YouTube of drivers filming their commutes through Riyadh, AFP matched the highway sign in the fire clip to a marker captured in one video showing the drive down Second Ring Road (archived here). The symbols, arrows, colors and text all appear to match.
AFP then mapped the path the vehicle took to Google Earth satellite imagery to identify the approximate location of the fire (archived here). The geocoordinates confirm that the inferno took place some 25 kilometers (15 miles) east of the US embassy, which is situated in the city's diplomatic quarter (archived here).
An AFP photo taken March 3 after the drone strikes shows the area surrounding the embassy is more densely populated with trees and buildings than the highway seen in the footage misrepresented online.
AFP has debunked other misinformation about the war in the Middle East here.
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