An old video of a man vandalising a statue at the famous Ain El Fouara Fountain in Algeria has been revived with a misleading claim that it shows a Muslim migrant destroying a statue in Italy.
The two minute 45-second clip shows a man in a white tunic hacking off with the breast of the female statue atop a fountain with a hammer and chisel as angry bystanders protests, some throw stones at the man. Three police officers try to stop the man who threatens them with his hammer.
WhatsApp message The video is viral with the same caption on Facebook.
Post viral on Facebook Click here to view the post, and here for an archive.
FACT-CHECK BOOM broke the video into key frames and ran a reverse image search which showed media reports of the incident from Algeria in 2017.
'A Muslim man armed with a hammer and chisel vandalised the statue in the northern Algerian town of Sétif in Algiers on December 18, 2017', France 24 reported.
It was also reported by British tabloid Daily Mail .
Several onlookers who recorded the incident also uploaded it on social media condemning it.
Below is a tweet from December 18, 2017, the day of the incident, with the video included in it.
BOOM further confirmed the location of the fountain by French sculptor Francis de Saint-Vidal, using Google maps.
The Google street view of Ain El Fouara statue in Sétif matches the statue in the viral video.
Google street view of Ain El Fouara statue in Sétif , Algeria The Ain El Fouara statue is a famous monument in Algeria which was earlier damaged in a bomb blast on April 22, 1997, and on February 28 2006, an Islamist damaged the statue with a hammer. (Click here to read more )