Video of Algerians celebrating football club win shared as Israel attacking Gaza

By: Rajini KG
October 12 2023

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Screenshots of the viral video circulating online. (Source: X/Modified by Logically Facts)

Context

A video is circulating on X (archive here) with a false claim that it shows an Israeli military response to a. It was captioned, “This is not Diwali fireworks. This is Israel's response to Hamas. Well Done....Great Retaliation #IsraelUnderAttack #IndiaWithIsrael.” Many users have shared this post on other social media platforms. The archive of the posts can be found here and here.

Screenshots of the viral video circulating online. (Source: X/Facebook/Modified by Logically Facts)

However, the video shows Algerian football fans celebrating by lighting flares in the streets of Algiers in 2023.

What we found

Through a Google reverse image search, we found the same video on YouTube shared as a Short video by the user @tnslm9829 on July 16, 2023. This short clip resembles the now-viral video, as we can see the same blue-and-green hoarding seen in the viral video. This indicates that the video was online before the Hamas attack on Israel.

Comparison of viral video and YouTube video. (Source: X/YouTube/Screenshots)

The video’s description had the letters ‘CRB’. Our research showed us that CRB is an Algerian association football club and stands for Chabab Riadhi de Belouizdad, also known as CR Belouizdad. 

Our research showed us that similar posts were shared on X post in July 2023, after the victory of CR Belouizad. In one such post that shared similar visuals, we could see a conical structure and using a keyword search and Street View on Google Earth Pro. we geolocated it to be the Martyrs Memorial in Algiers. 

The official YouTube channel of CR Belouizdad called the ‘Ultras Fanatic Reds,’ published a video on July 19, 2023, of Algerian fans sending out red flares and red fireworks. The video’s description states, “Celebration of the 61st anniversary of CRBelouizdad and the 10th Algerian championship.” According to Al Araby, a news website based in Qatar, Algerian team CR Belouizad won 2022-23 Algerian Ligue Professionnelle 1 championship in 2023. The club won the championship for the fourth time in a row, and their tenth win overall. The victory prompted celebrations in Algeria. 

This is also corroborated by the fact that lighting red flares is a custom Alergian fans have observed on previous occasions, as noted by a Yahoo Sports report from 2018 — which talks about Algerian fans filling the stadium with red flares and smoke after a win. 

Similar videos of these celebrations were also published on YouTube by multiple middle-eastern news networks, like Yallakora (an Arabic sports portal based in Egypt), Algeria Today - Aljazairalyoum (an Algerian newspaper), and dzayerNewsالآنية و المصداقية (an Algerian local news network), to name a few.

Geolocating the viral video

We noticed a TikTok watermark on the viral video and noticed the username ‘@ramiguerfi41’ on it. Further research showed us that while this particular user has deleted the video, a web cache shows that it was a clearer version of the now-viral video. 

At the beginning of the viral video, we could see a small roundabout with some cars parked on the pavement around it. Logically Facts managed to geolocate this location and found that it is the Place Al Mokrani, Sidi M'Hamed, in Algiers, Algeria. Using Google Earth Pro, we were also able to identify the location shown in the viral video.

The buildings and the roundabout seen in the viral video geolocated on Google Earth to Algeria (Source: X/Google Earth/Screenshots) 

This establishes that the celebration videos were taken in Algeria and not Israel. 

The verdict

CR Belouizdad fans celebrating their team's win by lighting red flares in Algeria has been misinterpreted as Israel’s air strike attack on Gaza. It is unrelated to the ongoing Israel-Gaza conflict.