Similar posts claiming the video shows an airstrike have circulated in Arabic, French and Spanish.
Fears of a wider regional conflagration in the Middle East rose as Israel shifted its focus last month from the war in Gaza, which erupted after Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attacks, to securing its northern border with Lebanon, where it faces Iran-backed Hezbollah.
Iran launched some 200 missiles after Israel announced the start of ground operations in southern Lebanon, sending frightened Israeli civilians into shelters. Israel claimed it intercepted most of the missiles, while medics reported two people injured by shrapnel.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said the strike was in retaliation for Nasrallah’s September 27 killing alongside that of a general in the Guards’ Quds force, as well as for the killing in July of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.
But the clip spreading online is unrelated and captures a gas station explosion in the southern Yemeni governorate of Aden.
Reverse image and keyword searches uncovered several August international media reports about the incident, many of which include the same video shared online (archived here, here and here).
“The explosion occurred on Al-Taseen Street in the Mansoura district, following a fire at the gas station,” Turkish news agency Anadolu reported August 31 (archived here).
Al Jazeera also shared the video August 30 on YouTube with an Arabic title that says: “Explosion at a gas station in Aden, Yemen” (archived here).
AFP photographers captured images of the explosion’s aftermath.
Saleh Al-OBEIDIAFP
Saleh Al-OBEIDIAFP
Several Yemeni media outlets reported the gas station had been operating without a license and therefore did not comply with safety requirements (archived here, here and here). Following the incident, a government investigation found 77 of the 122 gas stations in Aden were operating illegally (archived here and here).
AFP has debunked other misinformation related to the Israel-Hamas conflict here.
