No, This Video Doesn’t Show Aftermath of Iranian Drones Strike in Israel’s Negev

We found that the video has been online since February of this year and predates the Iran-Israel conflict.

Fact-Check | The video is old and predates the ongoing conflict between Iran and Israel.

(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

A video showing a massive blaze in the night has gone viral on social media, where users are claiming that it shows the aftermath of Iranian drones striking the Ramon airport in Israel's Negev area.

An archive of this post can be seen here.

(Source: X (formerly Twitter)/Screenshot)

(Archives of more posts sharing this claim can be seen here and here.)

But...?: The video is old and predates the armed conflict between Iran and Israel.

• We found that the video has been on the internet since February of this year and reportedly shows wildfires in Chile.

How did we find out?: We divided the viral video into multiple keyframes using InVID, a video verification extension on Google Chrome, and ran reverse image searches on some of them.

• This led us to several older versions of the video from March.

• One of the users had shared the video claiming that it showed visuals from the fire in Texas, United States.

• Under one of the videos we found during our search, one user's comment mentioned that the people in the video were speaking in Spanish, with a Chilean accent.

The user said that the people were speaking in "a Chilean tune."

(Source: X/Screenshot)

Older versions of the viral video: Taking this forward, we used the help of Google Lens to search for other older versions of the video.

• We were able to trace the viral video back to at least February of this year, when it was shared as visuals of fire from Valparaiso — a region in Chile.

News reports on viral video: On performing a Google search using the words "Iran attack Israel Chile", we came across a report published by Times of Israel.

• It carried some keyframes from the viral video and said that the video was aired by Iran's state media claiming that it showed their attack's impact on Israel. However, the video was reportedly from Chile.

• The report attributed the findings to a BBC reporter Shayan Sardarizadeh.

The report was published on 14 April 2024.

(Source: Times of Israel/Screenshot)

Conclusion: While we could not verify the location or context of the video independently, it is clear that the video predates the ongoing conflict between Iran and Israel.

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