Holy Quran burning: Viral video showing ‘Swedish presidential palace fire’ is actually Philippines blaze in May

After the incident of burning of the Holy Quran in Sweden, social media posts shared a video that they falsely claimed showed the "Swedish presidential palace" on fire. While the protest in Stockholm triggered a diplomatic backlash across the Muslim world, the video in fact shows a fire that gutted the historic Manila Central Post Office in the Philippines in May 2023.

The video, posted on July 8 on Twitter, which is being rebranded as "X" by an account with more than 69,000 followers, shows a neo-classical building engulfed in flames.

Arabic-language text on the video reads: "The revenge of the Holy Quran, the burning of the presidential palace in Sweden."

It circulated days after Sweden-based Iraqi refugee Salwan Momika burned pages of Holy Quran in a protest outside Stockholm's main mosque on June 28.

A permit for the protest, which coincided with the start of Eid Al Adha and the end of the Haj pilgrimage, had been granted in line with free-speech protections, but authorities later said they had opened an investigation over "agitation".

Muslim nations denounced the burning and thousands rallied in Pakistan, burning and stomping on Swedish flags.

The video was also posted alongside similar claims on TikTok, where it was viewed more than one million times in total.

Comments on the posts suggest some people believed the video showed the "Sweden's presidential palace on fire".

However, Sweden — which is a constitutional monarchy — does not have a "presidential palace", and its head of government is not a president but a prime minister.

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While protesters in Iraq torched the Swedish embassy on July 20, ahead of another planned protest to desecrate Quran in Stockholm, AFP found no reports as of July 26 that the prime minister's offices or residences had been set on fire.

Manila post office fire

AFP has previously debunked claims the video showed France's largest library "burned down by a mob" during riots triggered by a police officer's fatal shooting of a teenager in June 2023.

A reverse image search on Google using keyframes from the video confirms it was in fact filmed in the Philippines.

A similar video showing the same building on fire was posted on YouTube by Britain's Guardian newspaper on May 22, 2023.

Below is a screenshot comparison between the video used in the false post (left) and the Guardian's YouTube video (right):

It took firefighters more than seven hours to get the inferno under control, reported AFP, which also published photos and video of the fire.

A separate building with a blue signboard can be seen at the eight-second mark of the video shared in false posts. This building corresponds to the Overseas Filipino Bank near the post office, visible on Google Street View imagery here.

The Philippine Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP) ruled the fire at the historic building had been caused by the sudden explosion of a car battery in a storage room, according to a statement posted by the Philippine Postal Corporation.

The statement said the fire was "purely accidental in nature and (the BFP) declared that the investigation is considered closed and solved".

• World