Does a video show a building on fire in France amid the 2023 protests following the police shooting death of a teenager of North African descent? No, that's not true: The video shows a fire in a residential building in Ajman, United Arab Emirates on June 27, 2023. The building on fire is not in France amid the riots that took place after a 17-year-old was shot by police in the Paris suburb of Nanterre.
The claim appeared as a post (archived here) where it was published on Twitter on July 2, 2023. It opened:
!! This is what the mainstream media isn't showing you
This is what the post looked like on Twitter at the time of writing:
(Source: Twitter screenshot taken on Wed Jul 5 17:28:16 2023 UTC)
The video in the post is of a high-rise tower building on fire with three French flag emojis, a crying face emoji and two fire emojis over the footage. The message in the tweet implies that there is selective media coverage of the riots that are occurring in France after the teenager was shot and killed by police on June 27, 2023. The riots have been extensively covered by "mainstream media" outlets including The Associated Press, Fox News and USA Today. ABC News published an article on July 4, 2023, detailing the riots that have taken place in France since the teenager was killed.
This video does not show an incident in France during the riots: rather, it shows a building fire that took place in another country on June 27, 2023, the same day that the teenager was killed and before the first riots began in Paris.
The Ajman police department in the UAE tweeted a video and still photographs of the fire, with a Google translate from Arabic to English on the message stating, "Civil defense teams managed to put out a fire that broke out in a residential tower in Ajman."
فرق الدفاع المدني تتمكن من اخماد حريق شب في احد الابراج السكنية بعجمان pic.twitter.com/VjHd70ZUV4
-- ajmanpoliceghq (@ajmanpoliceghq) June 26, 2023
Sky News covered the fire in Ajman, United Arab Emirates, including a video of the building burning.
Yahoo! Finance published an article and video of the high-rise fire as well.
