Footage seen hundreds of thousands of occasions on social media exhibits a fireplace at a carpark outdoors Spain’s capital Madrid, opposite to Khmer-language posts claiming it exhibits a Thai manufacturing facility in flames following 5 days of hostilities alongside the nation’s border with Cambodia in July 2025. Spanish authorities informed AFP the circulating footage corresponds to a blaze they responded to in late June.
The video, exhibiting a row of parked vehicles on hearth with thick black smoke rising into the sky, accrued almost two million views on Fb after being shared on August 17, 2025.
Khmer-language textual content superimposed on the video says it exhibits a “automotive manufacturing facility hearth in Thailand.”
Screenshot of the false Fb put up captured August 27, 2025, with a crimson X added by AFP
The identical footage circulated extensively amongst Cambodian customers elsewhere on Fb, Instagram and TikTok after Phnom Penh and Bangkok agreed to a ceasefire that ended 5 days of lethal border clashes on July 29 (archived hyperlink).
The clashes, boiling over from a long-running border row between the Southeast Asian neighbours, killed at the least 43 individuals on each side and compelled greater than 300,000 individuals to flee their houses.
A reverse picture search on Google utilizing keyframes from the circulating clip led to the similar footage shared June 29 on X (archived hyperlink).
The 14-second video is captioned “Algete” — a municipality positioned round 30 kilometres (18 miles) northeast of Madrid.
Screenshot comparability of the falsely shared clip (L) and the footage posted June 29
Subsequent key phrase searches led to a comparable video posted the identical day to a YouTube channel belonging to the area’s emergency providers (archived hyperlink).
Its Spanish-language title reads: “Fireplace in a automobile car parking zone in Algete with a big column of smoke.”
The footage and comparable photographs appeared in Spanish media stories, which mentioned greater than 200 automobiles have been burned when a June 28 grass hearth unfold to a close-by car parking zone (archived right here and right here). No accidents have been reported.
Screenshot comparisons of the June 29 X video (L) and the same YouTube video posted by emergency providers, with corresponding parts highlighted by AFP
A spokesperson for the Madrid 112 emergency service informed AFP on August 29 that the falsely circulating video matches the fireplace they responded to in Algete in late June.
The footage additionally corresponds to Google Maps imagery of the realm (archived hyperlink).
AFP has beforehand debunked different misinformation associated to the border clashes between Thailand and Cambodia.
