A video showing a building imploding before falling down is being shared on social media, where users are sharing it to claim that it shows the United States of America's embassy in Tel Aviv, Israel, being brought down.
An archive of this post can be seen here.
(Source: Facebook/Screenshot)
(Archives of more posts sharing the same claim can be seen here and here.)
But..?: The clip dates back to May 2020 and shows an office building being demolished in a controlled manner in USA's Richmond, Virginia.
How did we find out?: We divided the video into keyframes using InVID, a video verification tool, and ran a reverse image search on one of them.
This led us to a photograph on Getty Images, which resembled the building in the viral video.
Here, it was shared as a photo of a Dominion Energy office building in Richmond, Virginia in USA.The logo, the notch in the building and the placement of the flagpole match in both visuals.
The logo, the notch in the building and the placement of the flagpole match in both visuals.
(Source: Facebook/Getty Images/Altered by The Quint)
Taking a cue from this, we looked for more information on the viral video.
We came across news reports by local news outlets in Virginia, which mentioned that Dominion Energy's old office building was demolished in a controlled manner on 30 May 2020.
The article carried similar visuals and was published on 30 May 2020.
(Source: ABC 8News/Altered by The Quint)
On comparing the video of the demolition in this report, we saw that both videos showed the same building being demolished.
Both visuals show the same set of buildings next to each other.
(Source: Facebook/ABC 8News/Altered by The Quint)
We came across several other news reports which carried videos of the demolition from different angles. You can see them here, here, and here.
The Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources had also mentioned the demolition a week before it happened, talking about its potential impact on the local peregrine falcon nests.
Many locals had stepped out to view the implosion as it happened, and uploaded videos on social media.
A quick search for Dominion Energy's Virginia office on Google Maps shows the glass façade building still standing, but does not show the organisation's older office.
US Embassy in Tel Aviv: We looked for news reports about any attacks on the US embassy in Tel Aviv, but did not find any credible ones.
On Google Maps, we looked for the embassy using the website's Street View feature, and saw that the US embassy's building was not as tall as the one in the video.
It did not resemble any structure in the viral video.
Conclusion: A 2020 video showing Dominion Energy's old office building being demolished in USA's Richmond, Virginia is being falsely shared as an attack on the US embassy in Tel Aviv, Israel.
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