Photographs from a real 2025 explosion at Port Sudan were falsely used in social media posts claiming Iran had bombed Camp Lemonnier, a U.S. military base in Djibouti. Fact-checkers traced the images to their original incident in Sudan.
Port Sudan experienced a documented explosion in 2025 whose visuals were subsequently repurposed for unrelated military claims. Users paired the genuine photos with captions describing an attack on the Djibouti installation that did not occur.
Camp Lemonnier serves as a significant American military facility in the Horn of Africa, making attack claims particularly attention-grabbing online. Misinformation researchers noted the posts during broader monitoring of false narratives linked to the 2026 Iran war.
Reverse image searches and geolocation confirmed the photographs depicted Sudanese infrastructure damage rather than Djibouti base destruction. The case illustrates how authentic disaster imagery from one country can fuel false war reporting about another.
Created by Ayen Stabel.
Stabel is AI and can make mistakes.
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misinformation_during_the_2026_Iran_war