Claim: A video shows a building on fire as a result of Iran’s April 2024 airstrikes on Israel.
Fact: The video is unrelated to the recent Iran and Israel escalation. It actually shows a 14-storey apartment building that caught fire in the Spanish city of Valencia on 24 February 2024.
On 17 April 2024, Soch Fact Check received a WhatsApp video showing a high-rise building ablaze, accompanied by the following text:
“ایرانی حملے کے بعد یے ایک ہی صاف وڈیو منظر عام پر آئی ہے جس اکائونٹ سے یے اپلوڈ ہوئی ہے وہ اکائونٹ ہی بند کردیا گیا ہے،،،اسی لیے لوگ وڈیوز شیئر نہیں کر پا رہے اسرائیلی کے حالات کی۔۔
[After the Iranian attack, only one clean video has come to the fore. The account from which it was uploaded has been closed, that’s why people are not able to share videos about the Israeli situation.]”
The accompanying text also included a link to ‘Information Treasure’, a WhatsApp community comprising 38 groups and describing itself as “بین الاقوامی اور قومی و اسلامی اخبار کا مرکز [A centre of international and national and Islamic news].”
Iran’s airstrike on Israel
The Israeli military said Iran launched over “300 drones and missiles towards Israel” in the middle of the night on Saturday, 13 April, the BBC reported (archive). The publication added that it “the first time ever” the Islamic Republic has carried out strikes against the Middle Eastern country.
However, Israel and its allies — including the US and the UK — shot down most of the drones and missiles before they entered its territory, the publication added.
This attack came two weeks after a suspected airstrike on 1 April 2024 by Israel on Iran’s consulate in Damascus, Syria, that killed seven Iranian officers, including two generals, The Associated Press reported (archive).
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check reverse-searched keyframes from the video and found that it is not only old but also completely unrelated to Iran’s strike on Israel.
Our search led us to two videos — one on YouTube (archive) and another on TikTok (archive) — from 26 and 25 February 2024, respectively. The former includes the caption “2.incendio valencia,” which has two hashtags: “#incendiovalencia” and “#incendiocampanar”. The latter is titled “INCENDIO EN VALENCIA,ESPANA 23 02 2024”.
Left: Screenshots from viral video sent to Soch Fact Check via WhatsApp; Right: Screenshots from TikTok and YouTube videos of the Valencia apartment building fire in February 2024
Consequently, we narrowed our search to Campanar in Valencia and found that the video, in fact, shows a 14-storey apartment complex in the Campanar district of Valencia, Spain, engulfed in a deadly fire, which spread to another building nearby on 24 February 2024, as per a report (archive) by the AP. Police recovered at least “nine bodies in the [two] gutted residential buildings”, it added.
An image matching a scene from the video is included in another report (archive) on the incident by the AP, while similar images were shared in an X (formerly Twitter) post (archive) by CGTN Europe.
Left: Screenshots from viral video sent to Soch Fact Check via WhatsApp; Right: Picture by The Associated Press of from the scene of the Valencia apartment building fire in February 2024
Credible European news outlets like The Times (archive) and DW (archive) also reported on the Valencia apartment building fire.
A WIRED article (archive) includes the link to smartphone footage (archive) posted on Reddit, showing how the fire started. A longer video report (archive) can be found on The Wall Street Journal’s YouTube channel.
Virality
Soch Fact Check found that part of the video was posted here on TikTok — with the text “ድል ለኢራን,” or “Victory for Iran” in Amharic language — superimposed on it at one point. It was also shared here.
The clip was also shared here, here, here, here, here, and here on YouTube. It was also shared here on Instagram, as well as here on Facebook.
Conclusion: A video does not show a building on fire as a result of Iran’s recent air strikes on Israel. It is entirely unrelated to the incident and actually shows a 14-storey apartment building engulfed in a deadly fire in the Spanish city of Valencia on 24 February 2024.
Background image in cover photo: Levi Meir Clancy & Akbar Nemati
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