A video of a fire erupting inside a vehicle has been viewed hundreds of times on Facebook, Twitter and on messaging app Line in March 2020 alongside a claim it shows an explosion that was sparked by an alcohol-based disinfectant used during the novel coronavirus pandemic.
Below is a screenshot of the misleading message:, The accompanying Thai-message translates to English as: “These days, there are many people using alcohol spray to kill COVID-2019. But the locations where you shouldn’t use it are in the car and kitchen, otherwise it will be like this.”, The global death toll from COVID-19 is more than 16,000 according to World Health Organization (WHO) data published on March 25., The same video was also published alongside a similar claim\xa0on Facebook here and Twitter here., The claim is false., A Google reverse image search using keyframes extracted from the video found that it was published on YouTube here on September 1, 2015., The video is\xa0titled “Young Saudis catch fire because of a spray inside a car”. It\xa0has been viewed more than 47,000 times., , Below is a screenshot comparison of the video in the misleading posts (L) and\xa0the YouTube video (R):, The car fire was also reported in this article published by\xa0Eyptian news site akhbarak.net\xa0on September 1, 2015. The report’s Arabic headline translates to English as “‘Video’ Watch the moment of an explosion inside the car due to a lighter and a spray”., The report’s first paragraph states: “There was a video of young Saudi men in a car where a spray leaked in the car, and one of them lit a lighter which resulted in a fire that spread across all parts of the car and burned them.”, The report\xa0also embedded this YouTube video, which shows the\xa0same footage as seen in the misleading posts. It is titled; “The moment of fire inside the car and the burning of passengers due to lighter and spray”., , Below is a screenshot comparison of the video in the misleading postso (L) and the video in the media report (R):, , Copyright © AFP 2017-2020.  All rights reserved.  Users can access and consult this website and use the share features available for personal, private, and non-commercial purposes.  Any other use, in particular any reproduction, communication to the public or distribution of the content of this website, in whole or in part, for any other purpose and/or by any other means, without a specific licence agreement signed with AFP, is strictly prohibited.  The subject matter depicted or included via links within the Fact Checking content is provided to the extent necessary for correct understanding of the verification of the information concerned.  AFP has not obtained any rights from the authors or copyright owners of this third party content and shall incur no liability in this regard.  AFP and its logo are registered trademarks.
This video has circulated since 2015 in reports about an aerosol explosion in Saudi Arabia | AFP Fact Check