Old and unrelated videos from Egypt and Iraq are falsely shared as those of fire incidents at the 2025 Prayagraj Mahakumbh
A fire broke out in the ISKCON tent camp on 07 February 2025, and another fire incident occurred in a ‘Kalpvasi’ tent on 09 February 2025 at the 2025 Prayagraj Mahakumbh. Amidst this, a couple of videos going viral on social media (here, and here) claim to show these fire accidents, alleging that several people lost their lives and many were injured. Let’s verify the claim made in the post through this article.
Claim: The visuals show massive fire accidents at the 2025 Prayagraj Mahakumbh.
Fact: The viral videos are unrelated to the 2025 Prayagraj Mahakumbh. The first video shows a massive fire in a suburb of Cairo, Egypt, caused by a crude oil pipeline rupture in July 2020. The second video depicts a cold storage warehouse fire in Al-Dhilal Street, Baghdad, Iraq in October 2024. Hence, the claim made in the post is Misleading.
Video 1
To verify the claim, we conducted a reverse image search on keyframes from the viral video which led us to a The Telegraph news (archived) report dated 16 July 2020 featuring the same visuals. According to the report, the footage shows a massive fire in a suburb of Cairo, Egypt, caused by a crude oil pipeline rupture.
Taking a cue from the above news video, we used relevant keywords and found multiple news articles and videos reporting the same incident, which can be seen here and here. These reports also confirm that the visuals show a massive fire outbreak caused by a crude oil pipeline leak in a Cairo suburb, Egypt.
Factly previously debunked the same video when it went viral with the false claim that a massive explosion in Israel had killed 500 Jews.
Video 2
To verify the claim, we conducted a reverse image search on keyframes from the viral video, which led us to an extended version posted on TikTok on 28 October 2024 (archived). The uploader commented in Arabic, stating that the footage depicts “Baghdad stores in Al-Dhilal Street.”
Taking a cue from this, we used relevant keywords and found a report (archived) about the fire incident, published by the Iraqi TV channel Al Sharqiya on its YouTube channel on 28 October 2024. The video is titled, “Baghdad wakes up to the effects of the cold storage fire. Initial estimates of losses in Al-Dhilal Street are about 30 billion dinars.”
We noticed that the white and yellow shop signs from the extended version of the viral video shared on TikTok appear in the Al Sharqiya news report.
Additionally, we found a post on X (archived) by PIB Fact Check dated 09 February 2025, dismissing the viral video as fake. The post stated that an old video of a fire is being shared on Instagram, falsely linking it to the Maha Kumbh, and clarified that it is unrelated to the 2025 Prayagraj Mahakumbh.
To sum up, old and unrelated videos from Egypt and Iraq are being falsely shared as showing visuals of a fire incident at the 2025 Prayagraj Mahakumbh.