Old video of fire outbreak in Egypt is passed off as an explosion in Israel - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
May 17, 2021
Amidst the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine, with the exchange of airstrikes between Israel and Hamas, a social media post accompanying a video of a massive explosion is being shared across platforms with a claim which reads ‘A big explosion happened in Israel where near about above 500 Jewish people killed’. Let’s fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: Video of a massive explosion in Israel where 500 Jews were killed.
Fact: The video actually shows a fire outbreak in the suburb of Cairo, Egypt which was caused due to a leak in the crude oil pipeline back in 2020. Multiple news agencies have reported the incident back then. This video has nothing to do with Israel and the current conflict. Also, there are no recent news reports about any explosion in Israel that killed 500 Jews. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
Reverse image search of the screen shots of the video led us to a 2020 news report by The Telegraph which carried the same visuals. According to this report, these visuals show a huge fire outbreak in the suburb of Cairo, Egypt. As per the report, the rupture of a crude oil pipeline is the cause of the outbreak.
Taking a cue from the above news video, Google search with relevant keywords yielded multiple news articles and videos which reported the same incident, these reports can be seen here and here. Even according to these reports, the visuals are related to a massive fire outbreak following a leak along a crude oil pipeline in Cairo suburb in Egypt. With all these, we can conclude that the video has nothing to do with Israel.
Also, if any such incident has indeed taken place, the entire global media would have reported it. However, we could not find any such recent news reports about an explosion in Israel that killed 500 Jews.
To sum it up, old video of a fire outbreak in Egypt is passed off as an explosion in Israel.