Protests against the killing of a French teenager by the police extended to Belgium and Switzerland, while French President Emmanuel Macron postponed an official visit to address the ongoing crisis. Clashes occurred between protesters and law enforcement officers during a demonstration in the Swiss city of Lausanne, where people expressed their grievances over the death of 17-year-old Nahel Merzouk.
Against this backdrop, an image showing a car bursting into flames is widely circulated on social media, linking it to the recent protests in Belgium.
The image is shared on Facebook with a caption: “Riots are now breaking out in #Belgium as huge numbers of migrants begin to loot and burn the city. Police are mobilising massive reserves to try to quell the uprising there, but it looks like another EU state is about to go up in flames. As #DutchFarmers are being forced off”.
Here’s the link to the above post.
FACT CHECK
NewsMobile fact-checked the above claim, and found it to be MISLEADING.
Doing a Reverse Image Search, NM traced a Dutch news website carrying the same viral image, dated November 27, 2022, with a caption “A burning car on the Mercatorplein in Amsterdam-West. Image ANP”.
Searching further, we found several news reports in The Sun and Daily Mail carrying the same viral image in November 2022, stating that “Riot erupted during Belgium v Morocco World Cup clash, as rampaging fans flip cars & set fires as water cannons deployed”.
The same image had been uploaded on the website of EPA Images on November 27, 2022, with the description: “A car is set on fire during an exuberant party atmosphere, after the Morocco team won FIFA World Cup 2022 group F soccer match between Belgium and Morocco in Doha, in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 27 November 2022. Heavy fireworks are set off and a car is destroyed and set on fire”.
Thus, it is evident from the above information that an old image from Amsterdam is falsely linked to recent protests in Belgium.
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