Dubai restaurant fire clip falsely linked to Mideast war
- Published on March 20, 2026 at 09:14
- 2 min read
- By Pasika KHERNAMNUOY, AFP Thailand
The war in the Middle East has triggered a flurry of social media posts sharing misrepresented visuals, including a video of a blaze they falsely claimed was shot in Israel following an Iranian strike. In reality, the clip shows a fire that engulfed a restaurant in Dubai in May 2025.
"Israel-Iran situation update," reads a Thai-language Facebook post that shared the video on March 17, 2026.
The clip was labelled "Israel" and overlaid with text that said: "Hit by another long-range strike again."
Viewed more than 130,000 times, it shows people screaming and running away from a burning building.
War erupted in the Middle East following a joint US-Israeli attack on February 28 that killed Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei (archived link).
The Iranian capital has been under near daily bombardment since then, hit by strikes the Israeli military said were "targeting infrastructure of the Iranian terror regime".
Tehran has kept up retaliatory fire on Israel and Gulf nations, including attacks on oil and gas facilities that have exacerbated concerns of a global energy supply shock.
Since the conflict began, falsely shared clips of explosions and chaos have flooded social media.
The circulating footage of a building on fire was also shared in similar posts claiming the footage shows a blaze in Tel Aviv or an explosion at a US base in Dubai.
Dubai restaurant fire
A combination of reverse image and keyword searches on Google found a higher-quality version of the video posted on TikTok on May 14, 2025 (archived link).
"Hope all affected people are safe," reads the caption, with hashtags indicating it was filmed in "albarsha” and "dubai".
The name of the burning restaurant -- "Pearl view" -- is visible in the video and corresponds to Google Street View imagery of the establishment in Dubai's Al Barsha neighbourhood (archived link).
According to an X post from Dubai's civil defence agency on May 14, 2025, the fire was caused by a gas leak and brought under control in record time (archived link).
The statement included a picture of the same restaurant seen in the falsely shared clip.
UAE-based newspapers Khaleej Times and Gulf News reported that emergency teams reached the 13-storey building almost immediately, and no casualties were reported (archived here and here).
AFP has debunked other misinformation stemming from the Middle East war.
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