Video of ‘explosion in Paris’ was actually filmed in Russia in 2020

A video allegedly showing a huge explosion in Paris has been shared on social media in the wake of a major incident in the French capital on 21 June.  

Versions of the video, which have been published on both Twitter and Facebook, show a huge fireball rising into the sky above a wide, busy road. 

The captions of the posts claim that this is “live footage” of an explosion in Paris. According to Le Monde, 50 people were injured after an explosion which was followed by a major fire that caused a building to collapse. The local deputy mayor, Edouard Civel, has said the incident was a gas explosion, though officials have said there is not currently enough evidence to determine the cause of the incident. 

But the video on social media doesn’t show the explosion in France. It was actually filmed in Volgograd, Russia, in August 2020, and shows an explosion at a petrol station. 

We often see examples of videos and images being falsely used online to claim they are showing recent events. For example, we recently checked what was wrongly claimed to be a video of the breaching of the Nova Kakhovka dam in Ukraine and another claiming to show NATO troops in the country which was actually a video of soldiers in Kabul, Afghanistan, from 2021. 

Misleading images and videos are some of the most common kinds of misinformation we see online, but they can sometimes be hard to spot. It’s always worth checking if a picture shows what the post says it does before you share it—we have written a guide on how to do so here.