Claim: Video shows Hezbollah’s attack on a petrochemical plant in the south of Haifa, Israel.
Fact: The claim is false as the video appeared in September 2024. It shows an Israeli airstrike in Yemen following the bombing of Lebanon.
On 27 October 2024, an account on X (formerly Twitter) posted a video (archive) with the caption,
حزب اللہ کے حملوں میں جنوبی حیفا میں اسرائیلی کی کیمیکل فیکٹری تباہ ہو گئی۔ زندہ باد حزب اللہ
Translated [An Israeli chemical factory in South Haifa was destroyed by Hezbollah attacks. Long live Hezbollah].
Fact or Fiction?
To investigate the claim, Soch Fact Check conducted a reverse-image search on the keyframes of the video. The results on Google Lens led to a video report published by Australian news outlet Herald Sun on 30 September 2024. The video, attributed to Reuters, was titled, “Israel pounds Lebanon and hits Houthis in Yemen as violence widens”, and reported on Israel’s attack on Yemen following the bombardment in Lebanon. The video from the viral post can be seen in this report, beginning at the 33 second mark.
The reporter can be heard saying that the “a video on social media showed a large fireball and smoke plume above the port city of al-Hudaidah in Yemen.”
The same video was also shared on X by Times of Gaza on 29 September 2024. According to the post’s caption, the video shows “New scenes for the lsraeli air attack on al-Hudaidah City in Yemen today”.
TODAY, a live daily broadcast of news by NBC, posted a video report on their YouTube channel, on 30 September 2024, about the expansion of Israel’s airstrikes into Yemen. In particular, the description of the video report stated that, “Israel is expanding its wave of attacks in Lebanon, carrying out its deepest attack in Beirut in nearly 20 years, and now it’s widening its war into Yemen.” The same clip as that of the viral video corresponds at the 39 second mark of the video report.
Furthermore, the news reports from Reuters, BBC, Al-Jazeera and Anadolu Agency suggests that Hezbollah attacked the port city of Haifa around 7 October 2024, and not on 27 October 2024 when the video went viral. However, the video in the claim first appeared in September, predating Hezbollah’s attack on Haifa.
Virality
On X, the video received 14,000 likes, 800 comments and 140 reposts. The archived versions can be seen here, here and here.
It was also shared here on Facebook.
Conclusion: Posts on social media claiming that a video shows Hezbollah’s attack on a petrochemical plant in Haifa, Israel, are false. The video appeared online in September 2024 and shows Israel’s bombardment in Yemen.
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