Video of ‘Hezbollah attack on petrochemical plant in Israel’ actually shows Israeli airstrike on Yemen port

A video of explosions in a built-up area is circulating on social media alongside claims it shows a Hezbollah attack on a petrochemical plant south of Haifa, in Israel.

But the video actually shows an Israeli airstrike on a Yemen port last month.

One post on X, formerly Twitter, has more than 300,000 views, and is captioned: “Hezbollah attacks a petrochemical plant south of Haifa”. The video has been widely shared on Facebook with similar captions. 

The armed group Hezbollah, which is based in Lebanon, fired rockets at the Israeli city of Haifa earlier this month. We can find no record that they hit any petrochemical plants, although the city does have several, making it a target for Hezbollah. However, the footage being shared on social media is unrelated. 

Using Google Lens, Full Fact found the original video in a BBC news article from September reporting on an Israeli strike on a port in the city of Hudaydah, Yemen. 

The BBC reported the strikes came the day after the Houthis, an Iranian backed rebel group in Yemen, launched a missile attack on Israel’s Ben Gurion airport, near Tel Aviv.

Full Fact has seen many miscaptioned images and videos circulating on social media about the conflict in the Middle East. 

You can find more of our work countering false claims on the subject here, and information on how to do this in our guides on spotting misleading images and videos.