Clip shows smoke from warehouse fire in Iraq, not wildfires in Los Angeles
The video, showing thick, fast-moving smoke over a street, was shared on Facebook on January 11, 2025.
It surfaced as wildfires raged across Los Angeles, forcing tens of thousands of people to flee their homes. The wildfires -- fanned by southern California's strong, dry Santa Ana winds -- have claimed at least 27 lives and wreaked billions of dollars of devastation (archived link).
The video's caption included hashtags for "California" and "wildfires".
The footage was shared alongside similar claims here, here and here.
The clip, however, was not filmed in Los Angeles.
Reverse image searches on Google using keyframes from the falsely shared video led to the same footage on TikTok posted on October 28, 2024 (archived link).
The user who uploaded the video commented in Arabic that it shows "Baghdad stores in Al-Dhilal Street".
Elements in the clip match similar videos about the fire published in media reports.
White and yellow shop signs from the falsely shared video can be seen in a report about the fire posted by Iraqi TV channel Al Sharqiya to its YouTube channel on October 28, 2024 (archived link).
Al Sharqiya's video is titled, "Baghdad wakes up to the effects of the cold storage fire. Initial estimates of losses in Al-Dhilal Street are about 30 billion dinars".
The same signs can also be seen in a report posted by Iraqi broadcaster Zagros TV on TikTok on October 30, 2024 (archived link).
The report shows a sign for a shop named "Ziggurat" at its 2:42 mark, which AFP geolocated on Google Earth (archived link).
The small tree on the street's median strip and a post in front of the shop correspond to features from the satellite imagery of Al-Dhilal Street.
The LA wildfires have spawned a slew of misinformation, some of which AFP has debunked here, here and here.
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