What was claimed
Footage shows Dubai’s international airport in flames.
Our verdict
False. The video is old and actually depicts a fire that broke out at a market in Ajman, in the UAE, in August 2020.
Old footage of market fire shared with false claims it shows Dubai airport in flames
An old video of a fire in the UAE has been circulating on social media alongside misleading captions that say it depicts recent footage of “Dubai's international airport” in flames.
The clip, which has been shared on Facebook and X, appears to be filmed from a moving vehicle and shows a building on fire and a large cloud of black smoke filling the sky.
One post on Facebook is captioned: “Dubai's international airport is up in flames.”
But we traced the same video to a Facebook post from August 2020 with a caption in Nepali, which (translated to English) said: “Massive fire breaks out in Ajman, Dubai.”
Other clips shared around the same time showed shots of the fire, which was reported as having engulfed a public market in the industrial area of Ajman in the UAE.
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The road in the clip also matches Google Street View imagery of a street in Ajman. Ajman is north of Dubai, and 12 miles (19km) from Dubai International Airport.
However, it’s true that drone strikes from Iran have been targeting Dubai International Airport, with reports of aircraft sustaining damage and at least one fire having broken out as a result of some of these attacks.
Videos which are miscaptioned to suggest they refer to a different event than the one they portray can persuade people to believe things are true when they are not. This can cause real harm, particularly in crisis situations when reliable information is harder to come by.
Before sharing content which claims to show wartime events, it’s important to consider whether it comes from a trustworthy and verifiable source before sharing. Our Full Fact toolkit and guides can help you do this.
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 this footage does not show a recent fire at an airport in Dubai, but a fire at a market in Ajman in 2020.