Video of explosion in Yemen misattributed to Iran striking Israel

Context

A video of a large fiery explosion in Yemen has been misattributed to Iran's airstrikes on Israel.

As reported by the BBC, on October 1, Iran launched hundreds of missiles into Israel, with some evading defense systems and striking Israeli territory.

Footage of these strikes has spread across social media, but this has also led to footage of other airstrikes or explosions being misattributed to this recent attack. One video, shared on X and Facebook, shows a large explosion with a structure in the distance in flames.

Screenshot of the video and caption seen on X. (Source: X)

Captions alongside the video read, "Videos circulating on Israeli Telegram groups show the effects of the Iranian strikes on Israel. Fires are still burning."

However, the footage is from Yemen

In fact

Reverse image searches of the video led to an X post and news report, which attributed the video to Yemen and predated the strikes on Israel on October 1. Using Logically Accelerate, a tool that enables proactive discovery of fact-check-worthy content on platforms, we searched the keywords "Yemen Explosion" and found more social media posts and a video from Sky News that shared the video and attributed it to Yemen.

Searching Google for "Yemen Explosion" led to an article by a local Yemeni news source, Yemen Shabab Net, where a higher quality and uncropped version of the same explosion video can be found. The article reported that an explosion occurred in the southern city of Aden, Yemen, on August 30. 

News reports from Sky News and Anadolu Ajansı, the Turkish state-run news, also both shared the same video of the explosion, in late August and attributed it to Yemen.

According to Yemen Shabab Net, which spoke to local sources, a fire broke out in a gas station in Aden, resulting in the tanker exploding. None of these news reports reported that the explosion was the result of airstrikes.

Reverse image searches using keyframes from the video showed that the video had also been misattributed to Israel before. An X post from September 22, shares the video and claims it shows the result of a Hezbollah strike on Israel.

The verdict

The video of the explosion is from Yemen, and it shows a gas station exploding. It has been misattributed to the current strikes against Israel. Therefore, we have marked this claim as false.