Video of scattering Florida crowd misrepresented as Iran strike on Israel
- Published on March 19, 2026 at 21:56
- 2 min read
- By Bill MCCARTHY, AFP USA
A video is spreading online with claims it shows Israeli beachgoers fleeing Iranian missiles amid the war in the Middle East, but the footage is misrepresented. The clip captures the view from a high-rise hotel of spring breakers in Daytona Beach, Florida panicking after what local law enforcement said sounded like gunshots but were actually water bottles being crushed.
"Mass evacuation from Eilat Coral Beach after people heard the sounds of Khorramshahr and Jabbār Iranian missiles," says a March 15, 2026 post on Facebook.
Similar posts spread across Facebook and other platforms such as X, including in Arabic and Spanish.
The posts come as Tehran and Iran-backed Huthi rebels in Yemen have fired retaliatory attacks against Israel, including the southernmost city of Eilat, after US-Israeli strikes on February 28 killed the Islamic republic's supreme leader Ali Khamenei and thrust the Middle East into war.
But the video of a crowd scattering across a beach is misrepresented.
Reverse image searches surfaced news reports and social media posts connecting the footage to Daytona Beach, Florida.
The earliest iterations appeared on TikTok in a pair of March 14 posts that said the video was filmed from the 20th floor of a hotel (archived here and here).
In a follow-up post two days later, the account holder explained he captured the footage during a spring-break gathering at the beach (archived here). He said that while some people believed there had been a gunshot, it "was a firework" that caused the crowd to scatter during a celebration that he described as otherwise peaceful.
On Facebook, however, the Volusia Sheriff's Office said the incident was actually the result of people in the crowd crushing water bottles (archived here).
"There were no shootings on the beach this weekend," the March 16 post said.
"Widespread videos posted online this weekend falsely claimed crowds were running from shots fired. These videos were also picked up by news media. In reality, the panic started due to the sound of crushed water bottles or in some cases, people running from the tides."
The post added that four shooting investigations over the weekend all involved unrelated incidents that happened off the beach.
Sheriff Michael Chitwood told media in a March 16 briefing that the rumor of a shooting on the beach was "a lie," and that he and 50 deputies were inside the crowd throughout the gathering and could personally verify that "there were zero gunshots on the beach."
"What they were doing was crushing a water bottle to make it sound like a gunshot to stampede the crowd," he said.
Photos published online and Google Earth satellite imagery show a matching pool and patio belonging to the Daytona Grande Oceanfront Resort, further corroborating the location (archived here and here).
AFP has fact-checked other misinformation about the Middle East war here.
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