Video of a fire in Indonesia goes viral as Pakistan attacking Indian military base amid Operation Sindoor

After India’s military strikes on May 7 at several sites in Pakistan, a 10-second video showing fire and plumes of smoke began circulating on social media as footage of Pakistan’s retaliatory attack on an Indian military base. In the viral clip, thick black smoke billows from a fire-ravaged area while men attempt to douse the flames with water jets. 

A fortnight after 26 civilians were killed by terrorists with alleged links to a Pakistan-based outfit in Kashmir’s Pahalgam, the Indian armed forces launched Operation Sindoor. This was a series of targeted strikes against nine sites of “terrorist infrastructure” in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. The Union ministry of defence described the action as “focused, measured and non-escalatory in nature”, with no Pakistani military facilities having been targeted.

Hours after the strikes were launched, an X user, Haroon Anjum (@_Haroon79), shared the video showing fire and smoke, claiming that Pakistan attacked an Indian military base “after offering the funeral prayers for the martyrs.” (Archive)

At the time this was written, the post garnered over 170,000 views.

An account named Bhatti Sahab also shared the same video on Facebook with a similar claim. (Archive)

Multiple Facebook users, such as Salman Abbasi, Syed Naseeb Agha, King of Khari (کنگ آف کھڑی) have shared the same video, echoing similar claims.

Click to view slideshow.

Similarly, a YouTube channel, 2 News HD, uploaded the purported video clip claiming it features the condition of an Indian military base after Pakistan had attacked it.

Fact Check

After breaking the video into multiple keyframes, we ran reverse image search on a few of them, which led us to an Instagram account, Info Kejadian Jepara dan Sekitarnya (@infokejadianjeparaa), which posted the same video clip on May 5, 2025. 

The account is an Indonesian news and media website. The caption of the post that features the same video translates to: “There was a fire in the HWI Pecangaan factory area. Several houses, food stalls, and a motorcycle parking area were burned. The chronology is not yet known.”

Taking a cue from this, we conducted a keyword search that led us to several news reports from local Indonesian media outlets confirming that the visuals were of a fire. According to a report by Kompas.com, a major fire broke out on the afternoon of May 5 in the parking area of PT Hwaseung Indonesia (HWI) in Gemulung Village, Pecangaan District, Jepara, Central Java. The blaze engulfed multiple food stalls and spread to the motorbike parking area, setting workers’ vehicles ablaze. 

An official of the Jepara Police told the publication that the fire was believed to have started from a stove explosion in one of the food stalls at around 3:00 PM, local time, eventually consuming four food stalls and hundreds of motorbikes. 

We also found a YouTube video by “pos kupang” (Tribun Network) uploaded on May 5, 2025 that corroborates the incident. The video description says that “A fire broke out in the motorcycle parking area behind the PT Hwaseung Indonesia factory, located in RT 02 RW 01, Gemulung Village, Pecangaan District, Jepara Regency.” From the 1:15-minute mark in the video, the now-viral clip can be seen.

To sum up, the video showing thick black smoke from a fire-ravaged area is from Indonesia and does not show Pakistan attacking an Indian military base. The fire incident in Indonesia happened on May 5, two days before Operation Sindoor was launched, so claims linking the video to retaliation by Pakistan are completely baseless and outright false.

Note that the Indian government’s fact-checking unit has also debunked this viral claim, reiterating the same findings as above.

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