A 25-second video is going viral on social media showing a woman livestreaming when she is suddenly interrupted by the sound of a loud explosion. Moments later, a blast wave appears to hit her room, toppling both her and her recording device. The screen then goes completely blank.
The video was posted on X by Times Now with the caption: “Viral video shows a woman livestreaming from her Dubai apartment moments before it was struck by an Iranian missile, causing massive destruction.”
The post, shared on March 2, 2026, received over 169,000 views and 159 reposts at the time of this article being written. (Archive)
Viral video shows a woman livestreaming from her Dubai apartment moments before it was struck by an Iranian missile, causing massive destruction. pic.twitter.com/hox49uBLsn
— TIMES NOW (@TimesNow) March 2, 2026
Other media outlets such as Lokmat Times, NewsX and Republic also posted the same video with similar caption. They described the video as showing an incident in Dubai.
News portals such as Zee News Marathi (Archive) and ABP News Hindi (Archive) published articles based on the same video, echoing the same claim.
On February 28, the United States and Israel launched a joint assault on Iran, targeting key military installations. The strikes reportedly killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, along with several senior figures of the ruling establishment. The attacks also caused civilian casualties, including children. In retaliation, Iran carried out strikes on US military bases across Central and West Asia, including in Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Jordan and Qatar. Late on March 7, four oil depots in and around Tehran were hit killing at least six people. The situation remains fluid and highly volatile at the time of writing, with developments continuing to unfold.
The video is being shared in this context. In addition to media outlets, several social media users across various platforms have also shared the same video. Below are a few instances:
Fact Check
To verify the clip’s authenticity, we conducted a reverse image search using screenshots from the viral video. This led us to an almost six-year-old video from Beirut, which is now being reshared online as footage from Dubai.
The video was originally posted on YouTube by a Filipino migrant worker, Edlyn Candido Lacse, on August 6, 2020, with the caption: “Blast while I am on my streaming.” The original video is about one minute and 30 seconds long. (Archive)
A day earlier, on August 5, 2020, the same account had uploaded another video titled “My Beirut Explosion Experience,” further indicating that the sequence of videos was originally presented as footage from Beirut. In that clip, the scale of the devastation following the blast is clearly visible.
We also found the same interrupted livestream video uploaded by another YouTube account named Yeiron Jee, with the description: “no intended to copyright, this video was taken from live stream of my friends edlyn lacse in lebanon.” This was posted on August 4, 2020.
Beirut, the Capital city of Lebanon, was rocked by a major explosion on August 4, 2020. The explosion was caused by the ignition of around 2500 tonnes of ammonium nitrate, which was stored at the Beirut Port. The massive explosion resulted in at least 218 deaths and nearly 10 thousand injuries. The video in question had captured the whole essence of this devastating incident.
Further, when the 2020 video began resurfacing online as an incident from Dubai, Filipino politician and journalist Raffy Tulfo issued a clarifying video addressing the claims. He also conducted an online interview with Edlyn Candido Lacse, who recounted her harrowing experience of surviving the Beirut explosion while livestreaming on August 4, 2020.
The full interaction is available on his official Facebook page, Raffy Tulfo in Action.
Hence, from the above findings, it is clear that the viral clip does not depict the consequences of an Iranian strike in Dubai, nor did it emerge during the ongoing conflict in West Asia. It originated way back, in August, 2020 on the day of the Beirut port explosion.
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