Videos of industrial fire and missile strikes are being shared online, including by Indian mainstream media, falsely claiming to show an Iranian attack on Qatar's Ras Laffan Industrial City, the world's largest LNG facility.
BOOM found that the videos are from Saudi Arabia and Oman and are not related to the Iranian strikes on Qatar’s energy infrastructure on March 18–19, 2026.
The strikes on Ras Laffan followed a major escalation on March 18, when the Israeli Air Force hit the South Pars gas field in Iranian waters, prompting Tehran to retaliate against Qatar's energy infrastructure. QatarEnergy confirmed that the March 18 strike caused extensive damage to the Pearl GTL (gas-to-liquids) facility, while a second strike in the early hours of March 19 targeted several LNG facilities, triggering large fires and further damage. No casualties have been reported so far.
Claim 1: Video shows Iran targeting Qatar’s Ras Laffan LNG facility
On March 19, several news outlets, including The Times of India, NDTV, News 24, India TV and India's state-run outlet News On AIR, shared the footage claiming it showed damage to Qatar's largest LNG facility caused by Iranian strikes on March 18.
Journalists Aditya Raj Kaul and Rahul Shivshankar also shared the video, making similar claims.
Claim 2: Video shows a fire at Qatar’s Ras Laffan Industrial City
Shivshankar also shared the second video on his verified X handle, with the caption, "LATEST VERIFIED VISUALS: Qatar's Interior Ministry confirmed that it is still dealing with a fire in the Ras Laffan industrial area. This area is the largest hub for gas production and export in the country."
Click here to view the post and here for an archive.
What We Found: Videos Are Not From March 18 Attack on Qatar
Video 1: We broke the video into keyframes and ran a reverse image search, which led us to a March 19, 2026 post on the official X handle of Turkish news agency Anadolu English, which reported that the video shows an Iranian missile attack on Saudi Arabia's capital Riyadh on March 18, 2026.
A keyword search in Arabic led us to a post stating the attack took place at Saudi Arabia’s Aramco oil refinery. A similar visual of the incident was also reported by Al Jazeera on March 19, 2026.
Anadolu cited the Saudi Defense Ministry as saying that air defense systems intercepted and destroyed four ballistic missiles targeting Riyadh on the evening of March 18, with debris falling across various parts of the city.
Qatar’s Government Communications Office (GCO) also issued a clarification, stating that the video does not show an attack in Qatar.
Video 2: A reverse image search of keyframes from the video led us to a March 12, 2026, report by Turkish outlet Bursa Hakimiyet, which carried a screengrab from the footage and reported that it shows a fire following a drone attack on oil storage facilities at Oman's Salalah Port.
The outlet credited Turkish news agency İhlas Haber Ajansı (IHA) as the source. Multiple video reports by Turkish outlets from March 12 featured the same visuals and corroborated this account.
On March 11, 2026, Reuters reported that Oman's civil defence was working to contain a fire in fuel tanks at Salalah port after drones struck oil storage facilities. The attack came amid escalating tensions in the Gulf due to intensifying military conflict between Iran and US-Israeli forces.
The visuals of the attack on Qatar’s Ras Laffan LNG facility were reported by AFP on March 19, 2026, and can be seen here.
