Old video showing nighttime rocket launches misattributed to Iranian attack on Israel

Iran’s retaliatory strike, involving hundreds of missiles and drones aimed at its archenemy Israel, has raised fears of a wider war in the Middle East. Social media posts sharing unrelated videos of rocket launches and explosions emerged online, among them a clip purporting to show the moment Iran launched its missile barrage toward Israel. But the statement is false; the original footage was filmed during the conflict between Turkey and Syria in 2020. AFP Fact Check debunked the footage at the start of the ongoing war in Gaza.

“Full video… Iran attacked Israel with 200 missiles and drones (sic)” says a post published in Nigeria on Facebook.

The post, published on April 14, 2024, and shared more than 300 times, includes three visual elements: a video showing dozens of missiles being fired from an open field at night; an image representing a fleet of fighters; and a photo of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“Biafra Airlines News” – the Facebook account that shared the post – supports the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), a group seeking independence in the southeastern states of Nigeria (archived here).

The Igbo population in these regions is mostly Christian, but it also houses a small Jewish community (filed here) estimated at several thousand people and Fiercely loyal (filed here) for Israel.

On April 13, 2024, Iran wholesale Israel, raising tensions in the Middle East to new heights, more than six months after the start of the deadly conflict between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas (archived here).

The unprecedented attack involved hundreds of missiles and drones, most of which were upset with the help of the US and other allies (archived here). The attack came retaliation for an attack widely attributed to Israel that hit Iran’s consulate in Damascus two weeks earlier (archived here).

The social media clip, however, does not show Iran firing missiles at Israel.

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AFP Fact Check previously debunked the clip in English It is Portuguese when it was shared along with the claim that it showed a Hamas attack on Israel (archived here It is here).

Using a reverse image search In a screenshot of the footage, we learn that the clip first circulated online in February 2020.

The Turkish newspaper The Daily Sabah published the video at X on February 3, 2020. According to the newspaper, the footage showed Turkish forces retaliating against Syrian attacks in Idlib province (archived here).

Ensonhaber, a Turkish news website, also Published the same video, indicating that it showed “Turkish troops firing rockets at Syrian soldiers in Idlib” (archived here).

At the time, the AFP reported that Turkish and Syrian troops clashed in the northwestern Syrian provinces of Idlib and Aleppo. Throughout the Syrian civil war, Turkey supported rebel factions in the country (archived here).

AFP Fact Check was unable to verify the exact location from where the rockets in the clip were fired.

Meanwhile, another reverse image search revealed that the photo of the fighter squad appeared on the official Facebook page from Khulna News, along with a warning message written in the native Bangladeshi language, translated as: “The image circulating on social media is created by artificial intelligence (AI). Avoid spreading rumors” (archived here).

Khulna News is a digital news website in Bangladesh’s third largest city, Khulna.

You can follow our coverage of the ongoing war in Gaza here and our most recent unmask of the Iranian attack.