Fact Check: Old Video Of Sri Lankan Ship Falsely Claimed As Israeli Ship Bombed By Yemen

Multiple posts have been shared on social media with the claim that Yemen has bombed an Israeli ship amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict.

Post claiming that Yemen has bombed an Israeli ship

Source : X/Modified by Logically Facts

The Verdict: [False]

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The video shows a ship burning off the coast of Sri Lanka in 2021 and is unrelated to Israel or Yemen.

What Is The Claim?

Multiple posts have been shared on social media X (formerly Twitter) with the claim that Yemen has bombed an Israeli ship. One such post carried the caption, “Yemen bombed the Israeli cargo ship "Unity Explorer" American military ships and other Western bases came to Djibouti trying to rescue the Israeli cargo ship Unity Explorer, which has now sunk in the Red Sea.” Archive links to such posts can be found here, here, and here.

X posts claiming that Yemen has bombed an Israeli ship. (Source: X/Modified by Logically Facts)

These posts are being shared in the backdrop of the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict in which over 1,200 Israelis were killed by Hamas in an attack on October 7, 2023, and over 15,200 Gazans have been killed by Israel in retaliation.

Reuters reported on December 4, 2023, that Yemen’s Houthi rebels claimed that they had attacked two ships in the Red Sea. One of these ships was named Unity Explorer, the same name used in the posts. The Houthis have previously fired drones and ballistic missiles at Israel. Since then, Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari reportedly said that the ships have no connection to Israel.

However, we found that the viral video has nothing to do with the alleged attack on the Unity Explorer and shows a May 2021 incident off the coast of Sri Lanka.

What Is The Truth?

We found that CNN Indonesia posted a longer video showing similar visuals on May 26, 2021. The video, a compilation of clips, reportedly showed a Singapore-registered vessel that had caught fire off the coast of Sri Lanka’s Colombo on May 20, 2021. The report, translated from Indonesian using Google Translate, showed that a more intense fire followed on May 24, owing to the presence of chemicals and cosmetics on the ship. At the 0:24 mark of the CNN video, the visuals match the viral video. 

CNN Indonesia published a video with the same visuals. (Source: Screenshot/CNN)

A 45-second-long video uploaded by the Sri Lankan English-language newspaper Daily Mirror on X on May 26, 2021, also closely matched the viral video. "Debris washes ashore at Negombo from the burning X-Press Pearl ship," the post read.

Debris washes ashore at Negombo from the burning X-Press Pearl ship.#SLnews #SriLanka pic.twitter.com/ir1jSrNZeI

— DailyMirror (@Dailymirror_SL) May 26, 2021

Other publications like the BBC also posted various other visuals of the burning ship.

According to The Guardian, the fire broke out on May 20, 2021, aboard the MV X-Press Pearl, a 25-person crew boat. While the crew was evacuated, the fire on the ship - which was carrying chemicals like nitric acid sodium hydroxide and 300 tonnes of fuel in its tanks - burned for over 10 days. The Indian and Sri Lankan navies were involved in dousing the fire, the report added. The incident caused huge environmental damage to air, ocean water, and beaches, and fishing was banned in a 50-km radius around the site of the burning ship. 

The Verdict

We have marked this claim as false as the video is from 2021, and the ship was Singapore-registered and not Israeli. Further, there was no angle of a Yemeni attack on the boat.

This report first appeared on logicallyfacts.com, and has been republished on ABP Live as part of a special arrangement.