Video of arson attempt on church is from Mexico, not UK
- Published on May 22, 2026 at 16:51
- 2 min read
- By Bill MCCARTHY, AFP USA
Outraged posts across social media platforms are claiming a video shows masked protesters setting a church on fire in Yorkshire, a county in northern England, in May 2026. But the clip was in fact captured months earlier during a women's march in Querétaro, Mexico.
"This is what Britain has come to. A group of masked protesters walked up to a Yorkshire church and deliberately set fire to its entrance while hiding their faces," says a May 20, 2026 post on Facebook. "A house of worship. Attacked. On British soil. In 2026."
Similar posts placing the footage in the United Kingdom cropped up across Facebook and other platforms, including Instagram, Threads and X. Internet personality Eyal Yakoby, who has previously spread misinformation, further claimed in a since-deleted X post that the demonstrators in the video were "Islamists."
The posts circulated days after tens of thousands of people marched in a May 16 London rally organized by a far-right activist and largely focused on immigration.
The issue is expected to feature prominently in a high-stakes June by-election in northwest England that could determine Prime Minister Keir Starmer's political fate.
The United Kingdom's statistics agency said May 20 that net migration to the country fell by nearly half in 2025, providing some relief for Starmer, who has faced intense pressure to curb new arrivals after decades of growth.
AFP has repeatedly fact-checked posts that falsely claim to show Muslim migrants burning down churches in the United Kingdom and other countries, such as Canada.
The latest video is similarly misrepresented. The clip is real, but it was not recorded in the United Kingdom.
Reverse image searches revealed that the footage has circulated since March 8, when various Spanish-language media organizations based in Querétaro, Mexico published it on social media (archived here, here, here and here).
The posts, and local news reports covering the incident, said the scene showed women who were marching for International Women's Day trying to burn the door of the Templo de San Francisco church in Querétaro (archived here).
A spokesperson for the diocese said similar demonstrations happen yearly and that the damages to the facade were not serious, because the door had been protected with fire-retardant material as a preventative measure (archived here).
Google Street View images of the church further confirm the location in Querétaro.
Read more of AFP's coverage of misinformation related to migration here.
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