Amid the ongoing Iran-Israel conflict, which began after Israel attacked Iranian nuclear sites on June 13, in which several civilians were killed, a video of a huge explosion in what looks like a power plant has gone viral. Social media users sharing the video claimed it is from Israel and that oil refineries in the port city of Haifa were blown up Iranian missiles.
News outlets ABP News Hindi and InKhabar used screengrabs from the viral video in their reports on Iran firing hypersonic missiles on Israel's power station. (Archived links: 1, 2)
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X user @Niharik43914213 posted the viral video on June 18, with a Hindi caption that Iran blew up an oil refinery. When this article was written, the post had accumulated more than 200,000 views and was amplified widely. (Archive)
Another X user, @SilentlySirs. posted the viral video, claiming it showed the destruction of the Bazan Oil Refinery in Israel's Haifa. This has also seen massive traction, with close to 500,000 views at the time of this article being written. (Archive)
The same video was shared with similar claims across X by several other users, such as @AuctionMirza, @AAPka_Manojk, @AhsanPti786, and others. (Archived links: 1, 2, 3)
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Fact Check
First, we checked to see if the Bazan oil refinery had been destroyed by Iranian missiles in the ongoing conflict, as claims on social media suggested.
A Reuters report from June 17 said that the Bazan group shut down all refineries after one of its power stations was hit in Iranian attacks on June 16.
To verify whether the viral video corresponds to the same attack, we broke it down into key frames, and ran a reverse image search on some of them. This led us to a YouTube video uploaded on November 19, 2015. The viral clip appears around the 00:25-minute timestamp.
Taking cue from the caption of the YouTube video, which said "Chinese chemical plant explosion," keyword search led us to a post on Weibo—a Chinese social media platform—by the Sichuan Fire Department, from November 13, 2015.
Based on this, we gathered that the visuals are from a drill carried out by the Sichuan fire department on November 12, 2015, and they match the structures seen in the viral video. Below is a comparison.
This was also reported by a Chinese news website on November 12, 2015. Below are screenshots translated in English.
In conclusion, a video from 2015, showing a fire drill in the Sichuan province of China, has been amplified by social media users with false claims that it shows oil refineries in Israel being hit by Iranian missiles. Even ABP Hindi and InKhabar used visuals from the Chinese drill in their stories on an Israeli power station being hit by Iranian strikes. While a power station attached to an oil refining group (Bazan) was hit in the strikes, the video is unrelated to the incident.
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