Claim: A video shows Yemen’s army attacking Israel.
Fact: Though military tensions have recently escalated between Israel and the Houthis, the video in the claim is unrelated. A close analysis of its visuals and past patterns of misinformation suggest that the video is most likely from the videogame Arma 3.
On 16 March 2025, the United States launched “large-scale military strikes” against Yemen’s Houthi militant group in response to their threat of resuming “attacks against ships passing through the Red Sea”. These strikes resulted in the deaths of at least 31 people. A month later, on 13 April, another strike by the US on “a ceramic factory in Sanaa province” resulted in the deaths of six people.
As the US continues its strikes on Yemen, military tensions ensue between the Houthis and Israel too. Early this year, on 3 January, the Israeli military reported that it had successfully intercepted a missile and drone launched by the Houthis. On 20 March 2025, the Israeli military intercepted another missile fired by the Houthis.
More recently, on 13 April 2025, the Houthis claimed responsibility for “three attacks on Israeli targets” involving ballistic missiles and a drone. The Times of Israel cited the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) as saying that one of these missiles was successfully intercepted, while the other “likely fell short” of its target. In reference to the drone, the publication added that, “there were no reports of aircraft reaching Israel from Yemen in the past day.”
Amid this escalation, a Facebook user shared a video on 10 April 2025, claiming it showed Yemeni forces attacking Israel.
From 0:00–0:21, the video shows heavy bombardment along a road where armoured vehicles and tanks are stationed, and a vehicle with a distinct green rear to the right. The scene then changes to show a row of tanks lined up on a similar road that are aerially bombarded.
The caption of the post reads as follows in Urdu:
“اسرائیل کے بُرے دن شروع یمن فوج کے مجاہدوں نے سر پر کفن باندھ لیا🔥✌️🇯🇴🇾🇪ماشاءاللّٰه شہزادے 💯حملے کی ایک اور ویڈیو منظر عام پر آگئی. ❤️”
This translates to English as follows:
“The bad days of Israel have begun, the Mujahideen of the Yemeni army tied a shroud on their heads. Another video of their attack has come to the fore.”
Fact or Fiction?
To verify the authenticity of this video, a reverse-image search of its keyframes was conducted. The results revealed that part of the video in the claim was shared on X as early as 5 December 2023. It was accompanied by a caption in Indonesian, which attributed the video to the Israel-Gaza war and read as follows in English:
“First ground battle after Palestinian militants’ ceasefire
Intercept IDF & US troops who want to attack Beit Hanoun
This battle ended with a major defeat for Israel.
23 Marines & 17 Israeli soldiers captured 64 US Marines & IDF soldiers killed”
This version only included the latter half of the video in the claim, which shows the aerial bombardment of a row of tanks lined up on an open road. However, it does not end here. At 0:33, it continues to show a different scene with similar tanks, and what appear to be human-like figures scurrying around the site of the bombardment. In this part of the clip, a news reel also runs at the bottom of the frame, shown in the image below:
Source: X
Interestingly, another X post, shared a longer version of the video in the claim on 24 December 2023. This version included the footage with the news reel that we observed in the X post from 5 December, along with the video in the claim. The only difference was that this video showed the first part of the video in the claim, with the distinct green vehicle to the right. After this, it cuts to the latter half of the video in the claim, where a line of tanks are bombarded. Lastly, it shows the footage with the news reel.
Similar to the X post from 5 December, the caption of this post also attributed the video to the Israel-Gaza war. Originally written in Indonesian, it stated as follows in English:
“Look at how sweet it is to see the Israeli Zionists running around like scared mice after they were ambushed by the Palestinian resistance.”
A reverse-image search of the keyframes with the news reel was then conducted. Among the few results, an article on the “Defense and Aviation” subsection of a personal blog called Counting Stars claimed that the footage showing the news reel was not of any actual conflict, but a clip from the videogame Arma 3, a “combined arms military game set in a massive military sandbox”.
To see if this was true, a Google search for “Arma 3 Israel Palestine” was conducted. This led us to reported instances of clips from Arma 3 being passed off on social media as actual footage of Israel’s war in Gaza. It is noteworthy that these articles were published in the months immediately following Hamas’ attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 and Israel’s ensuing war in Palestine.
On 12 October 2023, Reuters reported that a clip of Israeli helicopters being shot down by Hamas forces was also from Arma 3. On 13 October 2023, Poynter took note of the surge in online misinformation about the Israel-Hamas conflict, particularly the circulation of videos from Arma 3 with the false claim that it is actual footage of the war. BOOM, which is also a signatory of the International Fact Checking Network (IFCN), published an article on 31 October 2023 on a video that claimed to show Hamas militants bombing Israeli tanks in the Gaza Strip. This video also turned out to be from Arma 3.
Several clips from the videogame that were falsely passed off as instances from the Israel-Hamas conflict were highlighted in a segment from 6 November 2023 broadcast by France 24 English.
Bohemia Interactive, the videogame developer behind Arma 3, also issued a statement regarding footage from the videogame being used to spread fake news. This statement also identified some of the key ways to identify in-game footage, including “very low resolution”, a “shaky camera”, “unnatural particle effects” with regards to “explosions, smoke, fire, and dust”, and “unrealistic vehicles, uniforms, [and] equipment”.
None of these reports, however, included the video being fact-checked. But a closer look at the clip reveals that it contains a number of these markers of in-game footage (as identified by Bohemia Interactive). The camera constantly zooms in and out of the frame and pans from side-to-side throughout the entire fifty seconds. The footage is very low resolution and pixelated. In fact, between 0:15–0:21, a glitch causes part of the smoke from the bombs to disappear and reappear from one moment to the next, shown in the images below:
Moreover, the figures that appear to be scurrying at the site of the bombardment hardly look human, and their movement seems very robotic and unnatural.
There are also similarities between the video in the claim and the videos from Arma 3 spread as misinformation in late 2023.
The first is the similarity of the road, which appears to be divided by parallel lines of blockades or road barriers. Secondly, the road runs along an open landscape, resembling a desert with palm trees scattered in the background. Both features are encircled in the images below:
Therefore, the video in the claim seems to be footage from Arma 3; firstly because it meets the various criteria laid out by Bohemia Interactive to identify in-game footage, and secondly, it resembles other clips of Arma 3 in terms of its layout.
Moreover, during the first few months of Israel’s war in Gaza, multiple clips of Arma 3 were falsely passed as actual footage from the war. Seeing that the video in the claim also surfaced online first in December 2023, just a few months after Hamas’ attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, it was also possibly part of a similar pattern of misinformation.
Hence, Soch Fact Check concludes that the video in the claim is most likely a clip from the videogame Arma 3, and does not show an attack by Yemen’s army in Israel.
Virality
On Facebook, the video has garnered 124 K plays. It was also shared here and here.
Conclusion: The video in the claim is most likely a clip from the videogame Arma 3 and does not show an attack by Yemen’s army in Israel. Many of its features, such as unrealistic human figures and poor resolution suggest that the footage is from a videogame. It also surfaced online initially in December 2023 when other clips of Arma 3 were being passed off as actual footage of the war in Gaza.
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Background image in cover photo: Middle East Eye
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