By: Umme Kulsum
June 23 2023
2020 video falsely linked to gas explosion in central Paris
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Fact-Check
The Verdict False
The viral video reportedly shows an explosion at a gas station in Russia and is not linked to the recent explosion in Paris.
Claim ID 8dbb40b7
Context
Following an explosion at a building in central Paris on June 21, 2023 that left at least 37 injured, a video is circulating on social media, which claims that the visuals are from the Paris blast. A user on Twitter posted the video with a claim, “Live footage of the explosion in Paris,” followed by the hashtags, “#Explosión #viral #Paris.” The post had gathered 170.2K views and about 200 likes at the time of writing this story.
However, the video is from 2020 and reportedly shows an explosion at a gas station in Russia.
In Fact
On conducting a simple reverse image search, we found that the video has been on the internet since August 2020. The Independent, a U.K.-based online newspaper, carried the same video of the blast and reported it to be from a gas station in the city of Volgograd, Russia. A similar visual of the explosion, taken from a different angle, was published on Yahoo News, stating the same.
The video was also uploaded on YouTube by “On Demand News” on August 11, 2020. A local news portal from Volgograd, V1.ru, had reported the incident and had an image of the blast similar to the viral video. According to the report, the explosion took place at Lenin Avenue in Traktorozavodskiy, Volgograd, and left 13 injured.
The Verdict
The video is reportedly of an explosion that happened in August 2020 at a gas station in Russia’s Volgograd. It is not related to the June 2023 building explosion in Paris. Therefore, we have marked this claim as false.