What was claimed
A video shows a ship recently damaged in the Red Sea.
Our verdict
Incorrect. The footage is from China in December 2023 and shows a South Korean ship. It is unrelated to the recent conflict in the Middle East.
Video claimed to show ‘Red Sea hell for Israel’ actually shows South Korean ship in China
A video which supposedly shows “Red Sea hell for Israel and its friends” actually shows a South Korean tanker which exploded while sailing down China’s Yangtze River last year.
The video shows a burnt out ship, listing to one side in the water. One post on X, formerly Twitter, has been viewed more than 111,000 times, and is captioned: “Yemen Made Red sea hell for Israel and its friends”. The post has also spread to Facebook.
The Iran-backed Houthi rebel group in Yemen has repeatedly targeted commercial ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden since November 2023, in action it says is in retaliation for Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. As of early October 2024, the Houthis had attacked around 100 ships, and sunk two.
But the video being shared is unrelated to the recent conflict in the Middle East. It dates back to December 2023 and shows an exploded South Korean tanker in China.
News reports at the time said the tanker was sailing on the Yangtze River when its cargo hold suddenly exploded and became engulfed in flames. The 22 crew members were safely evacuated.
Miscaptioned videos are a common form of misinformation. We’ve seen lots of examples circulating online recently connected to the conflict in the Middle East.
For advice about how to verify videos yourself, read our guide.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because the video is of an exploded tanker in China and is unrelated to the recent conflict in the Middle East.