Dramatic footage of plumes of smoke rising from a cargo ship shows an incident in 2017, contradicting social media reports that wrongly linked it to a Houthi attack in the Arabian Sea, when the rebels targeted commercial shipping after the war broke out in Gaza. The video shows a fire engulfing a massive container ship off the coast of Sri Lanka.
“The Israeli cargo ship MSC Sarah V after a missile attack by Houthi fighters,” read a Sinhalese-language post on Facebook where the video was shared on June 27.
Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen have launched dozens of missile and drone attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea and Arabian Sea since November 2023, saying they acted in solidarity with Palestinians during the war in Gaza.archived link).
The war was sparked by an unprecedented attack on Israel by Hamas from the Gaza Strip on October 7, killing 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.
Hamas militants also captured 251 hostages, 116 of whom are still in Gaza. The army says 42 are dead.
At least 37,950 people, mostly civilians, were killed in the Israeli retaliation attack, according to figures from the Health Ministry of the Hamas-ruled area.
The minute-long video shows thick plumes of smoke billowing from a cargo ship as two ships on either side of it try to extinguish the flames.
The video circulated in similar posts on Facebook, Instagram and X after the Houthis claimed to have attacked a container ship in the Arabian Sea on June 24 with “a new ballistic missile” (archived link).
The rebels posted images they said showed the missile being fired at the Liberian-flagged MSC Sarah V (archived link).
According to the Joint Maritime Information Center of the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, the ship was attacked but not hit.
It added that the ship was likely attacked due to alleged ties to Israel.
Sri Lanka fire
However, images shared on Facebook show a ship catching fire off the coast of Sri Lanka in 2017.
The watermark on the video reads “adaderana.lk”, referring to the website of Sri Lankan news outlet Ada Derana.
Ada Derana reported on the fire that broke out on April 4, 2017, on a huge container ship sailing from Singapore to Egypt (archived link).
Sri Lanka’s navy said it received a distress call when the 14,000-container ship MSC Daniela was about 120 nautical miles (222 kilometers) from the island, AFP reported.
There were no casualties among the 22 crew members, the ship’s owner, Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC), said in a statement (archived link).
Below is a screenshot of the clip in the fake news (left) and in Ada Derana’s report (right):
The Sri Lankan Navy released similar photos of the fire, with the ship’s name clearly visible on the bow (archived link)
AFP has checked more misinformation about Houthi attacks here.
