Old US factory fire clip falsely linked to Mideast war
- Published on April 9, 2026 at 09:42
- 3 min read
- By Pasika KHERNAMNUOY, AFP Thailand
Misrepresented visuals flooded social media as war raged in the Middle East before Iran and the United States agreed to a two-week ceasefire in April 2026. Posts falsely claimed a video showed an Iranian strike on an industrial complex in southern Israel; the clip in fact depicts a massive blaze at a warehouse in the US state of Illinois in 2023.
"Reports say the sky and clouds over Israel have been polluted after Iranian missile strikes caused fires, sending large plumes of smoke into the air above the Neot Hovav industrial zone near the city of Beersheba," reads part of a Thai-language X post published on March 31, 2026.
The accompanying footage shows multiple angles of a compound engulfed in flames.
The post circulated shortly after the Israeli military said a fire at the Neot Hovav industrial zone in southern Israel may have been caused by missile shrapnel (archived link).
At the time, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claimed to have struck an industrial complex in southern Israel with missiles.
A joint US-Israeli operation against Iran in late February, and Tehran's retaliatory strikes towards Israel and Gulf nations, triggered a war that has killed thousands across the Middle East and sparked a global economic upheaval.
Washington and Tehran both claimed victory after agreeing to a two-week ceasefire on April 7 (archived link).
The war has sparked a torrent of posts sharing old and unrelated visuals.
The video was similarly misrepresented as depicting a scene from the war, and amassed more than one million views in posts on Facebook, Instagram, Threads and TikTok. On X, the Grok chatbot also falsely said the clip was filmed in Israel.
The claim circulated in posts written in English, Thai, Indonesian, Spanish and Arabic.
Warehouse fire
However, a note added to one of the X posts indicated the clip was filmed in the city of Chicago Heights in Illinois.
A reverse image search on Google using keyframes from the falsely shared video led to a higher-quality version published on X by Chicago-based reporter Sarah Jindra on February 6, 2023 (archived link).
"Unbelievable. Huge fire in Chicago Heights at 11th and Washington. Appears to be a shipping facility," the caption reads.
Jindra also posted three videos of the same fire filmed from a helicopter (archived here and here).
Media outlets, including CBS News and ABC7 Chicago, reported the fire that broke out in the early hours of February 6, 2023, at a manufacturing warehouse. Fire department officials said the fire was extinguished around noon and no injuries were reported (archived here and here).
According to a report from the Chicago Tribune published two years after the fire, the cause was never determined (archived link).
The building seen in the video matches Google Maps satellite imagery of the factory in Chicago Heights (archived link).
More of our reporting on misinformation around the Middle East war can be found here.
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