Video Shows Building on Fire in the Philippines, Not Sweden or France

The video shows a fire incident at an old post office building in Manila.

Fact-check: An old video from Philippine showing a historic post office building set ablaze is being passed off as a recent video from France and Sweden.

(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

A video showing a huge building on fire is going viral on social media with two misleading claims.

The first claim: It states that Alcazar Library in Marseille, France was set ablaze during the recent protests in the country, which started after a 17-year-old boy was shot and allegedly killed by the police.

An archive can be seen here.

(Source: Twitter/Screenshot)

The second claim: Another claim states that Sweden's presidential palace "suddenly" caught fire.

• This comes after an Iraqi-born refugee burned Islam’s holy book, Qu'ran, outside Stockholm Central Mosque on 28 June

• He claimed that he was 'protecting Sweden from Islam'.

An archive can be seen here.

(Source: Facebook/Screenshot)

(Archives of similar claims can be seen here and here.)

So, where is the video actually from?: The video dates back to May 2023 and shows a 100-year-old post office building in the capital of the Philippines on fire.

How did we find out the truth?: We performed a reverse image search on some of the keyframes of the video and came across old videos and reports from the Philippines.

• We found a report from 22 May shared by the news agency Associated Press which carried a similar video to the viral video.

• We compared the two visuals and noticed similarities.

(Note: Please swipe to see all comparisons.)

The viral video is from Philippines, neither Sweden nor France. 

The video is from May 2023.

The building matches in both the videos.

• The report stated that on 22 May, a nearly 100-year-old historic post office building in Manila, Philippines caught massive fire.

• It also added that the fire started before midnight in the basement of the five-storey building and was brought under control the next morning after more than seven hours.

• We found more reports about the incident on Reuters, Hindustan Times and Cable News Network (CNN).

We checked the building on Google maps: We found a street view on Google maps near Manila Central Post Office and it matched the viral video.

The building of Overseas Filipino Bank (OFBank) in Manila.

The viral video is flipped. 

What about the fire at France's library?: We found Alcazar Library (Bibliothèque l'Alcazar) in Marseille, France, on Google Maps and noticed that the architecture of the two buildings is totally different.

• We found no reports about fire at the library.

And the thing about Sweden's 'presidential palace'?: There is nothing known as the "presidential palace" in Sweden, however, we found two structures with a curvature in them - the Parliament House and the Royal Palace in Stockholm.

• The Manila Central Post Office building in the viral video had a curved building on two sides, but neither of the two buildings in Sweden had the same.

Conclusion: An old video from the Philippines showing a fire at a historic post office building is being passed off as a recent video from France and Sweden.

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