Old Video of Shipwreck Peddled as Clip of Israeli Ship Struck by Houthi Rebels

This video is from 2021 and shows Singapore's X Press Pearl that caught fire off the port of Colombo, Sri Lanka.

A video showing a large ship on fire, with men in uniforms helping to extinguish it is being shared on social media platforms.

What is the claim?: Users have claimed that the video shows a container ship called 'Calandra', owned by the Israeli shipping company, Zim Integrated Shipping Service.

• Some users also claimed that it was set on fire by Yemeni Houthis in the Indian Ocean.

This post recorded 405.3K views at the time of writing this story. (Archives of similar claims can be found here, here and here.)

Is it true?: This claim is false.

• This video dates back to 2021 and shows Singapore's X Press Pearl ship which caught fire off a port in Colombo in Sri Lanka.

How did we find out?: We divided the viral video into multiple keyframes and ran a Google reverse image search on some of them.

• We came across a similar video on YouTube by The Sun dated 25 May 2021.

• We compared the frames of both videos and found similarities.

• It was uploaded with a detailed caption about the fire incident faced by Singapore's X-Press Pearl container ship off a port in Colombo on 20 May 2021.

• The caption included a note by Singapore’s Daily Mirror that all 25 crew members were evacuated, while two had been hospitalised with injuries. The explosion sent several containers into the sea, the Mirror said.

• The ship departed from the Hazira port in India on May 15 and was en route to Singapore via Colombo, according to The Sun.

• In the video, a subtitle read, "Two Indian Coast Guard ships are now in place helping the Sri Lankan navy."

• We looked for reports and came across a press release by India's Ministry of Defence uploaded by the Press Information Bureau (PIB) on 20 May 2021.

• It mentioned that the Indian Coast Guard (ICG) worked jointly with the Sri Lankan authorities to "extinguish the massive fire onboard container vessel MV X-Press Pearl." It had been named Operation Sagar Aaraksha 2.

What happened to the ship?: The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) published its report on 6 August 2021 and flagged risks such as a sudden major spill of fuel oil aboard the ship and pollution from the wreck and lost containers.

• Additionally, Mongabay reported that the incident was Sri Lanka’s worst maritime disaster. 

• The fire-struck vessel carried 1,486 containers with 81 of them labelled as hazardous, transporting 25 metric tons of nitric acid, caustic soda and methanol.

• The shipwreck also led to the "largest nurdle spill in history", as the ship was carrying 87 containers filled with different kinds of plastic pellets.

Yemen's Houthis capture Israeli cargo vessel: The Quint reported on 21 November that the group had taken control of a cargo ship in the southern part of the Red Sea.

• The cargo ship was called "Galaxy Leader" and is reportedly owned by an Israeli businessman.

• Al Jazeera reported on 19 November that the Houthis said the ship was Israel's. However, the latter called it a "British-owned and Japanese-operated cargo vessel with no Israeli nationals on board."

• According to the report, some 25 people were on board when it was captured on its way from Turkey to India.

• In a six-post thread on X (formerly Twitter), Houthi military representative, Yahya Sare'e wrote that the Yemeni forces confirmed that they, "will continue to carry out military operations against the Israeli enemy until the aggression against Gaza stops and the heinous acts against our Palestinian brothers in Gaza and the West Bank stop," on 19 November.

1-The Yemeni Naval Forces managed to capture an Israeli ship in the depths of the Red Sea taking it to the Yemeni coast.
The Yemeni armed forces deal with the ship’s crew in accordance with the principle and values ​​of our Islamic religion.

— Yahya Sare'e (@Yahya_Saree) November 19, 2023

Conclusion: Clearly, this claim is false. The viral video dates back to 2021 and shows Singapore's X Press Pearl which caught fire off a port in Colombo in Sri Lanka.

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