A video shared on Instagram in South Africa shows a large cloud of dark smoke above a line of burning cars. People run from the fire, some appearing to drag others away from the flames.
The caption in the Instagram post reads: “Zimbabwean Men tried to steal oil from a pipeline then it ended up in a disaster after one shot at the oil tank.”
The video was posted on 2 November 2021, but no details are given of where or when it was shot. We investigated.
Fire at Egypt's Shuqair-Mostorod crude oil pipeline
We ran a screenshot from the first few seconds of the video through Berify, a reverse image search engine.
This led us to a video on YouTube uploaded by Global News, a Canadian television network, on 14 July 2020. The video is a longer clip of the same footage as in the Instagram post.
But the news network makes no mention of Zimbabwe or Zimbabweans.
The video is captioned: “Cars set ablaze after massive fire breaks out along pipeline in Egypt.”
The description of the video says that a massive fire broke out in Egypt's Shuqair-Mostorod crude oil pipeline and at least 12 people were injured.
A search for “Egypt's Shuqair-Mostorod crude oil pipeline fire” revealed several articles reporting on the incident.
According to Reuters, a witness said around two dozen abandoned cars had been torched.
The video was also published by UK’s Sky News. It doesn’t show “Zimbabwean men” trying to steal oil.
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