Old video of building collapse in Turkey misrepresented as footage of 2026 Venezuela earthquakes
- Published on July 14, 2026 at 15:52
- 2 min read
- By Pasika KHERNAMNUOY, Tolera FIKRU GEMTA, AFP Thailand, AFP Ethiopia
A video post claims to show a block of flats crumpling to the ground in Caracas after devastating earthquakes struck Venezuela. However, this is false: the footage shows a building that collapsed after a major earthquake struck central Turkey in February 2023. AFP geolocated the video to Şanlıurfa province in southeast Turkey.
“A powerful earthquake that struck Venezuela has claimed the lives of at least 32 people and injured more than 700 others,” reads a post in Kinyarwanda, Rwanda’s national language.
“Assessments by the relevant authorities indicate that the quake caused extensive damage in the capital, Caracas, affecting homes, roads, vehicles and other infrastructure,” it adds.
The nine-second clip shows a block of flats collapsing as people flee the area.
The post was published after two earthquakes measuring magnitudes 7.2 and 7.5 struck northern Venezuela less than a minute apart on June 24, killing at least 235 people and injuring around 4,300 (archived link).
However, the circulating clip was filmed in Turkey.
A reverse image search on Google using keyframes from the falsely shared video led to the same footage published by the Reuters news agency on its YouTube and X accounts on February 6, 2023 (archived here and here).
"Video shows a building collapse after a major earthquake of magnitude 7.8 struck central Turkey and northwest Syria," reads the caption of the video, which the news agency credited to Turkish broadcaster Urfa TV.
The same clip was also used in reports by BBC News, CNN and CBS about the 7.8-magnitude earthquake that struck southeastern Turkey near the Syrian border in the early hours of February 6, 2023 (archived here, here and here).
AFP reported that almost 60,000 people had been killed -- 53,000 in Turkey and 6,000 in Syria (archived link).
Officials said more than 12,000 buildings in Turkey -- some constructed only six months before the quake -- were either destroyed or seriously damaged, exposing poor construction standards (archived link).
The circulating footage also matches Google Street View imagery of a building in the Haliliye district of Sanliurfa province captured before the earthquake, in October 2022 (archived link).
AFP previously debunked other false claims that misrepresented footage from the Turkey earthquake in 2023.
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