A video that shows lifeless people lying on the road with blood splattered around is being shared on social media with a claim that it shows white people slaughtered by Muslim refugees in France. Through this fact-checking article, let’s verify the truthfulness of this claim.
Calim: Visuals show white people slaughtered by Muslim refugees in France recently.
Fact: This is a video from 2016, which shows victims of a terror attack that occurred in Nice, France, during the Bastille Day celebrations. Although a sympathiser of the Islamic State made this attack, the visuals do not depict a recent event. Hence the claim made in the post is Misleading.
To check the claim’s veracity, we performed a Google reverse image search on a keyframe obtained from the viral video. This search led us to a few news reports (here, here, and here) from 2016, which described the visuals as the aftermath of a truck terror attack in Nice, France, during the Bastille Day celebrations in 2016.
Reportedly, a “man drove a 19-tonne truck at high speed into crowds as a fireworks show to mark France’s Bastille Day national holiday came to an end on Thursday. He was shot dead after ploughing through the crowd for some 2 km (1.5 miles) as he opened fire from his vehicle with a pistol.”
Eighty-six people lost their lives in this attack which an Islamic State sympathiser named ‘Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel’ made (Islamic State claimed responsibility for this attack). He was killed by the police that day. Eight people linked with this truck attack were sentenced to jail by a French court in December 2022. Although it is a fact that this attack has its roots in Islamic terrorism, the visuals and the event are not recent, as claimed by the viral post, which misquotes it as the latest event.
To sum up, a 2016 Bastille Day terrorist attack video during celebrations is now viral as visuals of whites slaughtered by Muslim refugees.
