Does a video of burning cars show the aftermath of an assassination attempt on the life of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in May 2024? No, that's not true: This video, which is not from May, shows a car accident in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, weeks earlier. In mid-March 2024 the Saudi Civil Defense posted on their X account a photo of a firefighter spraying down the wreckage. Bystander video of the cars when they were engulfed in flames was also posted at that time, only to resurface weeks later with a false narrative about an assassination attempt attached.
One copy of the bystander video was posted on X, formerly Twitter, by @saudi_fight on March 16, 2024. A cropped version of this video resurfaced, posted by @wntrintel on May 6, 2024, with a false caption added:
Arab sources are reporting an assassination attempt against Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman
This is what the post, which is no longer available, looked like on X at the time of writing:
As of May 7, 2024, there is no credible reporting that there has been a recent attempt on the life of Mohammed Bin Salman, crown prince of Saudi Arabia. A Google search using keywords returned only results with the false claim on social media or fact checks debunking it.
The video in fact shows the aftermath of a car accident in March, which according to the Saudi Civil Defense, did not result in any injuries.
(Note: The platform X displays the timestamp of posts relative to the viewer, rather than the local time of the poster. The timestamps of the screenshots in this article are EDT. It was early morning in Saudi Arabia on March 16, 2024, when @SaudiDCD made the post that displays as "11:11 PM Mar 15, 2024" in the EDT screenshots.)
King Salman Road fire
Riyadh, KSA. Riyadh7985 people added to FavoritesSaudi M&m'sFrom the tragedy, she was sitting in a state of confusion without any reason: a fireRiyadh #fyp #foryou#
-- SAUDI FIGHT 🇸🇦 (@saudi_fight) March 16, 2024Using the name of the business in the illuminated sign, "Alkhunaizan," Lead Stories was able to find the location of the appliance chain store on King Salman Road (inset below). Features of this storefront match both the @Saudi M&m's video and the photo posted on X by the Saudi Civil Defense. That post, translated from Arabic by Google, was captioned:
#الدفاع_المدني بالرياض يخمد حريقًا في مركبتين إثر حادث مروري، ولا إصابات.Civil_Defense in Riyadh extinguishes a fire in two vehicles following a traffic accident, and no injuries were reported.
