Footage of two unrelated events in Algeria and Indonesia has been viewed thousands of times, alongside a false claim that it shows the aftermath of a Hezbollah attack on Israel. The clips – which first circulated online in August 2024 – dated several weeks before the escalation of the Israel-Hezbollah conflict.
“We have seen an Israel hell by the grace of Hezbollah,” reads the Bengali caption next to a video shared on Facebook on September 23, 2024.
The footage begins with people gathering to watch fireworks light up the sky above vehicles on a road. It then cuts to the scene of a fire in a large open space, as screaming can be heard in the background.
The video was also shared alongside a similar false claim in Bengali here And here on Facebook; And here in English on Instagram.
The message spread online under the name Israel and Hezbollah threatened to escalate their cross-border attacks despite a chorus of international calls for both sides to step back from the brink of all-out war.archived link).
Hezbollah has exchanged cross-border fire with Israel almost daily since Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel, which sparked the war in the Gaza Strip.
The unprecedented attack resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli figures, including hostages who died in captivity.
Of the 251 hostages seized by militants, 97 are still being held in Gaza, including 33 who the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 41,788 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to health ministry figures in the Hamas-held territory.
But the fragment has nothing to do with the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.
Fireworks in Algeria
Reverse image searches on Google with keyframes extracted from the found post video shared on YouTube on August 9, 2024 (archived link).
The caption of the clip reads: “Celebration of the fans of Mouloudia d’Alger on the occasion of the 103rd anniversary.”
Below is a comparison of the flipped images in the fake messages (left) and the YouTube video (right):
The Algerian football team Mouloudia Club d’Alger celebrated its 103rd anniversary in August 2024.
At the two-second timestamp, the clip shows a group of men wearing jackets with the acronym ‘GIP’, which corresponds to the uniform of the Algerian police (archived link).
The images generally correspond to Google Street View images from the capital Algiers near the Great Mosque (archived link).
The official Facebook page of Mouloudia Club d’Alger will also appear on August 8 published images of fireworks in Algiers to mark the event (archived link).
Fire on the Indonesian market
Further searching for images found the other one clamp published on an Instagram account for Indonesian news channel Kabar Kutim on August 22 (archived here).
The caption of the video reads: “A fire has occurred at Sangkulirang market location, Benua Baru village. This incident occurred early Thursday morning, 22/08/2024”.
Other news items confirmed that a major fire broke out on August 22 at Sangkulirang Market in the Indonesian province of East Kalimantan on the island of Borneo (archived here).
Below is a comparison between the flipped images used in the fake messages (left) and the video published by Indonesian media (right):
Qadaruddin SHISHIR
AFP has previously debunked several claims about unrest in the Middle East here And here.