Unrelated Videos Go Viral as Scenes of Burning Marseille Library in France!

After a police shooting of a teenager of North African descent, there have been violent riots throughout France, primarily led by migrant communities. Despite the depleting tendency of riots, many photos and videos related to the riots are being spread rapidly. Some of such social media posts are misleading. This is our investigation of such a misleading social media post.

Social Media posts

A viral video claims the scenes to be the burning down of the library in Marseille, France, as seen below, where a building is engulfed in flames.

The Alcazar Library in Marseille is the largest library in France, containing an archive of one million historically significant documents.

African migrants just TORCHED it. pic.twitter.com/QpGlDB2uNp

— Stew Peters (@realstewpeters) July 5, 2023

Archived

Users commented on it like below.

Video is also being spread on FB.

Facebook | Archived

The video went viral on FB.

We decided to do a fact-check on this.

Fact Check

First, we checked whether the rioters had actually burnt a library in Marseille, as social media posts suggest.

Then, we found multiple news reports explaining the burning of a library in Marseille, French. Such news reports can be reached here and here and archived and Archived.

However, we could not find that viral video in any recognised mainstream media report about the burning of the library.

Then we tried to find the actual incident of the viral video using Invid- We-Verify tool. We found a viral video with a few same keyframes published on Aljazeera over a month ago, titled ” Major fire engulfs historical Manila post office building.” The video can be watched below.

From keyword search, we were able to find out many details on it. Media reports about that incident can be reached here, here and here.

Hence it's clear that the incident depicted in the viral video occurred in May 2023 in Manila, Philippines.

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Conclusion

Our investigation found that although rioters had burnt down a library in Marseille, the viral video does not depict the actual incident. The viral video is connected with the burning of a post office in Manilla, Philippines, in May 2023.