This footage has circulated in reports about an oil pipeline explosion in Egypt since July 2020
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on May 26, 2021 at 12:20
- 2 min read
- By AFP Bangladesh
Copyright © AFP 2017-2025. Any commercial use of this content requires a subscription. Click here to find out more.
The video was shared on May 16, 2021 in a Facebook group with more than 15,000 members.
The video's Bengali-language caption translates in part as: “Palestine is retaliating against Israel with tough measures: Hamas. There was an explosion in Israel that killed around 650 Jewish people.”
Hamas refers to the Palestinian Islamist group that rules Gaza.
Eleven days of Israeli air strikes and artillery fire on Gaza since May 10 killed 254 Palestinians, including 66 children as well as fighters, AFP reported.
Rocket and other fire from Gaza claimed 12 lives in Israel, including one child and an Arab-Israeli teenager, an Israeli soldier, one Indian national and two Thai workers.
The footage was also shared alongside a similar claim here, here and here on Facebook.
However, the claim is false.
A reverse image search using keyframes from the video traced the footage to a Sky News story published on July 15, 2020. The report's headline states: “Egypt: Seventeen people injured in oil pipeline explosion on Cairo motorway”.
A longer version of the video published by Canadian news outlet Global News on July 15, 2020 shows a road sign near the fire spot with “Cairo Airport” written in Arabic and English.
Google keyword searches found more reports on the fire after a leak from the Shuqair-Mostorod pipeline next to a busy highway in a Cairo suburb.
A report by Reuters news agency quoted the Egyptian ministry of petroleum saying that “a spark caused by passing cars ignited crude that was leaking from the pipe.”
Multiple keyword searches did not find credible reports about an explosion that killed around hundreds of Jewish people in Israel in May 2021, as the misleading posts claim.
AFP previously debunked posts claiming the video showed an explosion in Dubai.
Is there content that you would like AFP to fact-check? Get in touch.
Contact us