Footage of two unrelated events in Algeria and Indonesia has been viewed thousands of times alongside a false claim it shows the aftermath of a Hezbollah attack on Israel. The clips — which first circulated online in August 2024 — predated the escalation in the Israel-Hezbollah conflict by several weeks.
“We have seen an Isra-Hell by the grace of Hezbollah,” read the Bengali-language caption alongside a video shared on Facebook on September 23, 2024.
The footage opens with people gathering to watch fireworks illuminating the sky above vehicles on a road. It then cuts to the scene of a fire in a large open area with screams 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 post spread online as 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 traded almost daily cross-border fire with Israel since Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel which triggered the war in the Gaza Strip.
The unprecedented attack resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures that include hostages killed in captivity.
Of the 251 hostages seized by militants, 97 are still held in Gaza, including 33 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 figures provided by the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
But the clip is unrelated to the Israel-Hezbollah conflict.
Algeria fireworks
Reverse image searches on Google with keyframes extracted from the post found a video shared on YouTube on August 9, 2024 (archived link).
The clip’s caption says, “Celebrations of the fans of Mouloudia d’Alger on the occasion of the 103rd anniversary.”
Below is a comparison of the flipped footage in the false posts (left) and the YouTube video (right):
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 featuring the acronym ‘G.I.P’, which matches the uniform of the Algerian police (archived link).
The footage generally corresponds with Google Street View imagery of the capital Algiers near the Great Mosque (archived link).
On August 8, Mouloudia Club d’Alger’s official Facebook page also published footage of fireworks in Algiers to mark the event (archived link).
Indonesian market blaze
Further image searches found the other clip published on an Instagram account for Indonesian news outlet Kabar Kutim on August 22 (archived here).
The video’s caption says, “A fire occurred at the Sangkulirang Market Location, Benua Baru Village. This incident occurred early Thursday morning, 08/22/2024”.
Other news reports confirmed a major fire broke out at the Sangkulirang market in Indonesia’s East Kalimantan province on the island of Borneo on August 22 (archived here).
Below is a comparison between the flipped footage used in the false posts (left) and the video published by the Indonesian media outlet (right):
Qadaruddin SHISHIR
AFP has previously debunked multiple claims about the unrest in the Middle East here and here.
