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Fact Check: Fire in Chinese parking lot falsely described as Iranian strikes on Israel
A video of a parking lot fire in the Chinese city of Chongqing on June 11 has been falsely described on social media as showing one of the recent Iranian strikes on Tel Aviv.
Israel launched its biggest ever military attack against Iran on June 13 after saying it had concluded that Iran was on the verge of developing a nuclear weapon.
Iran, which denies planning to acquire nuclear weapons, responded by firing at least 400 ballistic missiles and hundreds of drones towards Israel, Israeli officials said.
"An Iranian attack like Tel Aviv has never seen before," reads a June 17 X post, opens new tab on the 16-second clip.
However, the video shows a large fire burning at a temporary parking lot for motorcycles in Chongqing's Jiulongpo District two days before the exchange of fire between Israel and Iran began on June 13.
The scene in the video corresponds, opens new tab with Baidu Maps imagery, opens new tab of the area from 2019 and visually matches, opens new tab eyewitness footage verified by Reuters on June 12 to show the incident.
Jiulongpo District's fire department said on Weibo, opens new tab that the fire had broken out at a motorbike parking facility on June 11. Local fire services said no casualties were reported.
Iranian missiles have repeatedly struck Tel Aviv and its outskirts, killing residents and levelling homes, opens new tab. "What happened to us is a catastrophe," Tzvika Brot, mayor of Bat Yam in the Tel Aviv municipal area, told a Knesset committee, the Times of Israel reported, opens new tab. "Twenty buildings out of all the buildings that were damaged are designated for immediate demolition."
Miscaptioned. The video was filmed in Chongqing, China, and shows a fire at a temporary parking lot for motorcycles on June 11. It is unrelated to Iranian military strikes on Israel, which began on June 13 in retaliation for Israeli strikes on the same day.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work.
