This 2021 video shows ship fire off Sri Lanka’s coast, not 2024 Houthi strike

Following a series of U.S. airstrikes against militants in Yemen, Iran-backed Houthi fighters on Jan. 15 fired a missile that struck a U.S. container ship off Yemen’s coast. 

The escalating conflict in the Red Sea has garnered attention on social media, including from people who purported to share footage of the recent Houthi strike against the U.S.-owned-and-operated container ship.  

"BREAKING: A US-owned cargo ship was just hit by a missile off the coast of Yemen!" read the text accompanying a video in a Jan. 15 Instagram post. The video showed aerial footage of a cargo ship engulfed by orange flames and billowing smoke. 

That post and several others making similar claims were flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

The videos in the posts show a 2021 container ship fire near Sri Lanka, not the aftermath of a 2024 Houthi strike off Yemen’s coast. 

A reverse-image search of frames of the video show that the footage was captured in May 2021, after a fire broke out on MV X-Press Pearl, a container ship. The vessel’s cargo included hundreds of tons of chemicals, including 25 tons of nitric acid, news organizations reported. At least two people were injured during the fire or subsequent evacuation, and the incident caused one of the worst environmental disasters in Sri Lanka’s history, according to the United Nations Environment Programme.  

The Instagram posts feature zoomed-in and mirrored clips of the 2021 container ship fire. But close inspection of the footage — including a letter "A" that scrolls past — shows the clips match. The "A" is part of a watermark that appeared in the original video shared by The Sun, a British newspaper, and the BBC. It read, in full, "AIR FORCE Media." The footage was captured by Sri Lanka’s Air Force and Disaster Management Agency, according to The Sun.

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A watermark visible in the videos posted on Instagram shows that the footage isn’t from a 2024 container ship attack off Yemen’s coast. (Screenshots from Instagram and The Sun’s YouTube channel.)

BBC reporter Shayan Sardarizadeh reported on X that an X user with a paid blue check mark who is known to promote conspiracy theories had shared the video and falsely claimed it showed the Houthi missile attack. 

The Jan. 15 strike off Yemen’s coast caused "limited damage" to the ship’s cargo hold, but no reported injuries, Reuters reported. 

We rate posts that claim this video shows a U.S. cargo ship that was "just hit by a missile off the coast of Yemen" False.