Old Video From Russia Going Viral As Hezbollah Drone Attack On Northern Occupied Palestine.

A video of a drone attack on an oil refinery is going viral on social media claiming it to be a “Hezbollah drone” reaching oil refineries in northern occupied Palestine. Sharing the footage on Facebook, a user wrote, “A Hezbollah drone reaches oil refineries in northern occupied Palestine”.

https://archive.org/details/drone-attack

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However, as we investigated, we came to know that the viral video was not related to the ongoing Israel-Lebanon conflict. Here’s the fact check.

Fact Check

We started our investigation by taking some screenshots from the viral video and conducting a reverse image search. This led us to a report published on the Cairns Post Website on 22 July 2024. The report showed the viral video. According to the report, the video is from Russia and the oil refinery was hit in a Ukraine attack. The report read, “Russia’s Tuapse oil refinery, its biggest on the Black Sea, was damaged in a major Ukrainian drone attack overnight which sparked a fire, Russian officials said on Monday (July 22), though the extent of the damage was not immediately clear”.

Please read here. Archived Link.

Moving forward, we found the same video uploaded on the YouTube channel “Voice of America”. The caption of the video reads, “Russian officials say Ukrainian drone attack damages oil refinery | VOA News”

The description of the video reads, “Officials in Russia’s Krasnodar region said Monday a Ukrainian drone attack damaged the Tuapse oil refinery, owned by Russian oil giant Rosneft, causing a fire that was later put out. The same plant was damaged by several Ukrainian attacks earlier this year. Russia’s defence ministry reported Monday destroying 75 Ukrainian aerial drones overnight in areas along and near the Russia-Ukraine border, including eight over Krasnodar. Ukrainian drone attacks are typical in those regions, but the scale reported Monday was larger than usual”.

A detailed report from VoA can be read here.

Archived Link.

 Another similar report can be read here. 

The same video was uploaded on the official YouTube of Reuters too.

The description of the video reads, “Russia’s Tuapse oil refinery, its biggest on the Black Sea, was damaged in a major Ukrainian drone attack overnight which sparked a fire, Russian officials said on Monday (July 22), though the extent of the damage was not immediately clear”.

From this, it’s clear that the viral video is from Russia.

Conclusion

From our investigation, we can say that the claim made with the viral video is misleading. The video does not show a Hezbollah drone attack on northern occupied Palestine; rather, the video is from Russia when a Ukrainian drone hit Russia’s Tuapse oil refinery on 22 July 2024.