A video shows a power station at Haifa airport in Israel on fire after being targeted by drones from Iraq.
This isn’t what the clip shows. It is actually footage of a fire at a warehouse in Michigan in the United States, unrelated to the Israel-Gaza conflict.
A video of a large fire burning in the distance does not show a power station at an Israeli airport following a drone attack, as some posts falsely claim on Facebook. It actually shows a fire at a vape distribution company in Michigan.
One caption with the video says: “The iron dome has been intercepted. The power station at #haifa airport is now burning after being hit by drones from #iraq.” Another claims the fire was at a power station near the airport.
The video was also used with the same claim “not verified” by the Times of India, and has been shared over a thousand times on X (formerly Twitter) with a caption in Arabic, which says when translated by Google: “The power station at Haifa Airport is now burning after being targeted by drones.”
The Iraqi Islamic Resistance group reportedly claimed that it had targeted the power plant with drones on 5 March, although an article in the Israeli media said no such incident had been reported.
The Iraqi Islamic Resistance is an umbrella group of Iran-backed armed groups in Iraq and Syria. It claimed responsibility for a 28 January drone attack on a Jordanian-US outpost which killed three US soldiers.
However, the same footage was shared by news outlets in the United States on 4 March, as part of coverage of an explosion and fire at a warehouse on the outskirts of Detroit in Michigan.
A 19-year-old man was killed after being hit by debris from the explosion.
Full Fact has seen many miscaptioned images and videos circulating on social media about Israel and Gaza. We’ve written about posts claiming to show events, places and people that they don’t.
You can find more of our work countering false claims on the subject here, and information on how to do this in our guides on spotting misleading images and videos here and here.
Image courtesy of MarcusObal
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because the video does not show a drone strike on an Israeli airport, but a fire at a warehouse in Michigan in the US.
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