6 days ago
Old footage of Indonesia fire falsely shared as Barcelona mosque blaze
"The Spanish public set fire to the largest mosque in Spain after getting frustrated by terrorist activities of Islamic infiltrators. Did the people do the right thing?" reads a July 15 Hindi-language Facebook post.
The shared footage shows a domed roof with an Islamic star-and-crescent moon fitting engulfed in flames, with sticker text that reads, "The Spanish have burned the Islamist Piera mosque in Barcelona and is now being investigated by police".
A photo of a room with blue floors and another of a similar burnt down room are overlaid on the clip as it plays.
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Screenshot of the false X post taken July 21, 2025, with a red X mark added by AFP
The clip surfaced across social media in German, Spanish and French after a mosque in Barcelona's Piera municipality was gutted by a fire on July 12, two days before its scheduled inauguration (archived link). No casualties were reported.
According to various news reports, local police stated traces of accelerant were found inside the building and that the fire appears to have been deliberately set (archived links and here).
Local residents have staged protests in the wake of the fire, with some calling the incident a "hate crime" (archived link).
However, the circulating footage is from Indonesia, not Spain.
A reverse image search on Google using keyframes from the clip found it was published on TikTok by Indonesian news outlet Tribun Cirebon on October 19, 2022 (archived link).
The video is captioned: "Dome of Jakarta Islamic Center Grand Mosque engulfed in flames".
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Screenshot comparison of the clip shared in the false posts (left) and the TikTok video by Tribun Cirebon (right)
AFP reported the blaze led to the collapse of the dome of the mosque in Jakarta, which was undergoing renovations at the time (archived link). No one was injured in the incident.
Footage of the dome's collapse was also published by AFP (archived link).
(AFPTV / Sibarani)
Google Street View imagery of the Grand Mosque in Jakarta also shows similar structures seen in the circulating video.
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Screenshot comparison of the video in the false posts (left) and the Google Street View imagery of the Jakarta mosque (right), with similar elements highlighted by AFP
Reverse image searches found the two photos overlaid on the circulating clip genuinely show the damaged Barcelona mosque and were published in local media reports about the fire (archived links ).
