Amid escalating tensions in the Middle East due to the struggle between Iran, Israel, and the USA, a video showing heavy gunfire is going viral on social media with the claim that it shows shooting inside the Saudi royal palace. The caption of the post states, “Urgent and Important: Sounds of gunfire inside the Saudi Royal Palace in Riyadh, the residence of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.”
Let’s check the truth.
Fact check:
We began our investigation with a reverse image search on Google, and the results led us to a similar video uploaded on X in April 2018, sharing the same clip with captions such as “INCREDIBLY heavy gunfire now in #Riyadh.”
This indicates that the viral video is old and not related to the ongoing crisis in the Middle East.
Using these hints, we conducted further searches and found several media reports regarding this incident from 2018.
According to an Al Jazeera report, “Saudi forces have shot down a toy drone near the royal palace in the capital, Riyadh, as videos posted online purported to show the area ringing with heavy gunfire.
The official spokesman of Riyadh police said on Saturday that security forces “dealt with” an unauthorised, small drone-type toy after spotting it at a security point in Khuzama neighbourhood, state-run news agency SPA said”.
Moving forward, we found CNN Middle East also covered the incident and featured the same footage.
So, taking account of all this evidence, we can understand that an old video from Saudi Arabia was falsely shared as recent.
Conclusion
Fact Crescendo found that the claim made along with the viral video to be Misleading. This video shows a 2018 incident where a toy drone was shot down in the vicinity of the Saudi royal palace.
Title: 2018 video goes viral as recent gunfire at Saudi royal palace
Fact Check By: Usha Manoj
Result: Misleading
