Fact Check: Viral video claiming to show camels being swept away in Dubai floods in 2024 is Misleading
Heavy rains have returned to Dubai days after the country was flooded. The authorities cancelled flights in and out of Dubai while the students and workers were asked to be at home. The Dubai authorities also sent emergency notifications to the citizens on mobile phones asking them to stay home.
Floods in Dubai
Heavy rains have returned to Dubai days after the country was flooded. The authorities cancelled flights in and out of Dubai while the students and workers were asked to be at home. The Dubai authorities also sent emergency notifications to the citizens on mobile phones asking them to stay home. Dubai has received 20 millimeters of rain in 12 hours, which is more than twice the rainfall the city receives in April and May. Meanwhile, Abu Dhabi received 34 mm of rain in 24 hours, more than four times what it would usually get in April and May. The meteorological department has said that the unstable weather is likely to affect parts of the UAE for two days.
Amidst this, a video showing floods in a desert area with camels being swept away in the water is being widely circulated on social media. The users on Facebook are sharing the video with the claim that it is showing the floods in the desert area of Dubai. The users are implying that the city area was drowned before and now the desert area is drowning.
Some Facebook users shared the video with the caption “2 sides of Dubai flood – yesterday city and desert” showing city floods as well as floods in the desert. While others shared only floods in desert with the caption ‘The other side of Dubai. The desert. Animals in the flood’
Fact Check:
The claim is False. The viral video does not show the floods in the desert of Dubai.
When we searched the extracted keyframes from the video using Google reverse image search, we found that the video was shared by a few Facebook users in the year 2018 with the caption in Arabic.
The video was also shared by Malayalam weekly news with the title ‘Camels caught in the river in Tabuk -Video’. The article was published on October 26, 2018. The article states that Camels get swept away in the desert during heavy rains in the region. Unexpectedly, the flood water rushes through the place where the camels were standing and one of the camels is swept away. The footage of the incident is viral on social media.
An Instagram user named Ada Monzon also shared the video with the caption “Lluvias fuertes en Tabouk, Arabia Saudita han ocasionado una crecida significativa de este río. Los camellos enfrentaron grandes retos. Via @dearmoonproject @wmo_omm
Therefore, the video showing camels swept away in floods is not from Dubai and is not recent. The video is from Tabuk, Saudi Arabia and this incident occurred in October, 2018. The claim is False.