Outdated Indian cargo ship fire footage misrepresented as Hormuz strike
- Published on May 5, 2026 at 22:34
- 3 min read
- By Bill MCCARTHY, AFP USA
A video spreading across X was claimed to show a ship ablaze after being struck by Iranian missiles in the Strait of Hormuz as a spate of early May attacks threatened to upend the fragile ceasefire in the Middle East war. But the clip is unrelated; it shows a fire that broke out on a cargo vessel off the coast of India in July 2024.
"VIDEO: A SHIP IN HORMUZ WAS JUST BOMBED BY IRAN," says a May 4, 2026 post on X from Spencer Hakimian, a New York hedge fund manager whom AFP has repeatedly fact-checked for spreading misinformation.
Similar posts rocketed across X after Iran and the United States traded fire May 4 amid US efforts to facilitate the transit of commercial ships through the vital waterway, with US Central Command saying American forces had shot down multiple Iranian missiles and drones and also destroyed several of Tehran's small boats.
Some of the posts claimed the video showed Iranian missiles hitting a US warship in the strait, after a strike was reported by Iran's Fars news agency and quickly denied by the US military. Fars news agency also shared the clip on Telegram, without assigning ownership to the ship.
Other posts sharing the clip on X alleged that the vessel belonged to the United Arab Emirates, where authorities said Iran had resumed launching missiles at its territory and fired drones at a tanker affiliated with a state-owned oil giant.
Still more posts claimed the footage showed a South Korean cargo ship on which Seoul reported an "explosion and fire."
But the vessel in the video is not American, Emirati or South Korean -- and the clip is unrelated to the war in the Middle East.
The same video was previously misrepresented in Arabic-language posts falsely claiming it showed a ship Iran targeted in the Strait of Hormuz in April 2026.
Reverse image searches revealed that The Times of India published identical -- albeit clearer and less zoomed-in -- aerial footage to Facebook and X on July 19, 2024, reporting that it showed a fire aboard a cargo ship off the coast of Goa, India (archived here and here).
#WATCH | A major fire broke out on a container cargo merchant vessel about 102 nautical miles southwest of Goa. ICG is doing the fire fighting operation on the ship which carries international maritime dangerous goods amid bad weather and heavy rains.
— The Times Of India (@timesofindia) July 19, 2024
(Source: Indian coast… pic.twitter.com/dF9xq0pfRW
The outlet said the ship was carrying "international maritime dangerous goods" and that the Indian Coast Guard fought the fire amid harsh weather.
The Indian Coast Guard posted additional images of the vessel to its official X account (archived here). AFP also distributed footage of the inferno (archived here).
Multiple Indian Coast Guard ships battled the fire in the Arabian Sea after receiving a distress call about explosions on the front deck of the MV Maersk Frankfurt, AFP reported at the time. No casualties were reported from the vessel, which had been sailing from India's Gujarat state to Colombo in Sri Lanka.
AFP has debunked other misinformation about the Middle East war here.
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