Old Video of Demolition of Buildings in China Viral as Israel's Attack on Gaza

This video is from Kunming, China, where fifteen high-rise buildings had collapsed in 2021.

Fact-Check: This incident took place in China in 2021. 

(Source: Altered by The Quint) 

Amid the devastating Israel-Hamas conflict, a video showing multiple high-rise buildings collapsing to the ground is being shared with the claim that it happened because of Israeli airstrikes in Palestine.

An archive of the post can be found here. 

(Source: X/Screenshot) 

This post had 94.6K views at the time of writing this story. (Archives of similar claims can be found here and here.)

What is the truth?: The claim is false as the incident is from Kunming in China where fifteen high-rise buildings were demolished.

How did we find out?: We divided the viral video into key frames and ran a Google reverse image search on some of them.

• The results led us to multiple old TikTok videos which we accessed using a virtual private network (VPN).

• Archives of the old TikToks can be found here and here.

• One of the TikTok videos had "15 buildings demolished in Kunming, China" written over it and was uploaded on 16 August. (TikTok did not mention the year).

Here is a close-up of the text and date. 

(Source: Altered by The Quint)

• With a relevant keyword search, we came across news reports that mentioned the demolition of the fifteen high rises in Kunming.

• The Paper published a report on 30 August 2021 that the fifteen buildings had been "unfinished for seven years and then were demolished." These buildings were in the second phase of Liyang Star City in Kunming.

Here is a preview of the report. 

(Source: The Paper/Screenshot)

Latest updates on Israel and Palestine: As of Thursday, 2:09 PM India Standard Time (IST), Israel has said it will not release any resources, including electricity into Gaza until Hamas 'releases all captives.'

• Amid the heavy bombardment, Al Jazeera has reported that due to the power blackout, ‘hospitals risk turning into morgues.'

Conclusion: While we could not get an independent verification of the date of the incident, we could confirm that the video is from China and it predates the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas.

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