A video showing several parked cars on fire is going viral on social media.
What's the claim?: The claim states that this visual is from the ongoing protests happening in France and blames the Muslims population for this.
What's happening in France?: France has been witnessing violent protests after the death of Nahel, a 17-year-old teenager who was allegedly killed at the hands of the police for driving a car without a license.
The country's public had been clashing with the police and damaging public property by burning and dismantling it.
![This is an old video from Australia and is unrelated to France protests.](https://images.thequint.com/thequint%2F2023-07%2F6d7504b8-15c9-4ced-a724-bb63d678f391%2F_Screenshot_2023_07_05_092250.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&fmt=webp&width=720)
An archive can be seen here.
(Source: Twitter/Screenshot)
How did we find out the truth?: We performed a reverse image search on some of the keyframes of the video and came across a tweet carrying the same video.
This tweet was posted on 28 April by a Twitter user named Jacey Knowles, and it was a reply to another tweet about a fire in Pickles parking lot in Australia.
Taking a cue, we performed a relevant keyword search on Google and came across several news reports about the fire in the parking lot.
We found reports from April by Sky News Australia, 7NEWS Australia, The West Australia, ABC News and The Guardian.
The report by The Guardian stated that a massive fire broke out at the Pickles car parking lot in Australia's Perth suburb of Bibra Lake on 28 April.
It also added that the fire destroyed over 60 vehicles.
The article also carried a tweet by Knowles which had four different videos of the incident.
The viral video also matched two of these videos. Here's a comparison:
Statement from Pickles parking lot: We found an official media statement released by Pickles company regarding the fire that broke out on 28 April.
It stated that a fire broke out in a storage yard that housed salvage vehicles at the Pickles Bibra Lake branch.
The fire affected 60 salvage vehicles and associated racking.
The statement was released on 29 April, and the authorities were still investigating the cause of the fire.
Conclusion: An old video of Australia's parking lot on fire is being falsely shared as a video from the violent protests France.
(With inputs from Aishwarya Varma. )
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