Iran’s retaliatory attack involving hundreds of missiles and drones aimed at its archfoe Israel has heightened fears of a wider war in the Middle East. Social media posts sharing unrelated videos of rocket fire and explosions have surged online, among them a clip purported to show the moment Iran unleashed its barrage of missiles in the direction of Israel. But the claim 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.

“Breaking full video … Iran attacked Israel with 200 missiles and drones (sic)” reads 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 depicting a fleet of fighter jets; and a photo of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

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

The Igbo population in these parts is mostly Christian, but also home to a small Jewish community (archived here) estimated to be several thousand strong and fiercely loyal (archived here) to Israel.

On April 13, 2024, Iran attacked Israel, elevating tensions in the Middle East to new heights more than six months into 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 countered with the help of the US and other allies (archived here). The attack came in retaliation for a strike widely blamed on Israel that hit Iran’s consulate in Damascus two weeks earlier (archived here).

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

Turkish salvo

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

Using a reverse image search on a screenshot from the footage, we found the clip was first circulating online in February 2020.

Turkish newspaper The Daily Sabah published the video on 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 site, also published the same video, indicating that it showed “Turkish troops launching rockets at Syrian soldiers in Idlib” (archived here).

At the time, AFP reported that Turkish and Syrian troops had clashed in Syria’s northwest provinces of Idlib and Aleppo. Throughout the Syrian civil war, Turkey has backed rebel factions in the country (archived here).

AFP Fact Check could not verify the precise spot where the rockets in the clip were fired from.

Meanwhile, another reverse image search revealed the photo of the fighter jet squadron appeared on the official Facebook page of Khulna News, along with a cautionary message written in the native language of Bangladesh, translating to: “The image circulating on social media is created by artificial intelligence (AI). Avoid spreading rumours” (archived here).

Khulna News is a digital news site in Bangladesh’s third-largest city Khulna.

You can follow our coverage of the ongoing Gaza war here and our latest debunk of the Iranian attack.