Circulating video clips of "Houthi attacks on oil facilities in eastern Saudi Arabia"... What is their reality?

- Video clips have spread on social media as being linked to alleged Houthi attacks on Saudi oil facilities in the east of the Kingdom recently. These clips have received tens of thousands of views and interactions on the X site alone, accompanied by comments, some of which say: “Huge fires in Abqaiq oil facilities.

Saudi Arabia declares a state of emergency and raises the alert level to the maximum level.” One of the videos shows night scenes of rising flames and clouds of smoke over a residential area surrounded by a mountain range, which supports the claim’s inaccuracy because there are no high mountains in the city or Abqaiq governorate in the eastern region of Saudi Arabia.

The terrain of Abqaiq Governorate, referred to by the prosecution, is characterized by flat plain lands interspersed with low sand hills and moving dunes, and completely devoid of high mountainous heights. Although no old version of the video was found, footage provided by Getty Images and published by several media outlets, including Axios, was completely identical to what the clip showed.

The photo was then accompanied by a description saying: “Smoke and flames rising from the site of air strikes that targeted an oil depot in Tehran on March 7, 2026.” The research showed that the second clip, which was also linked to the alleged attacks, dates back to September 14, 2019, when the Houthis attacked Aramco oil company facilities.

A published version of the video is available at that time on a YouTube channel. The title of the video at the time was: “Explosions and gunfire at the Aramco refinery.”

A third video was also circulated claiming to be of "scenes of the targeting of Yemeni forces at the Abqaiq oil facilities in the eastern region of Saudi Arabia." While a reverse search showed that the clip was linked to Ukrainian attacks on the logistics center of the Wildberries company in the city of Electrostal, Moscow region, Russia, on July 18, 2026.

At the time, President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed that Ukrainian forces launched strikes on two major Russian logistics centers in the Moscow and Tambov regions. The circulation of these clips comes as the Houthi group, supported by Iran, launched attacks against what it described as “sensitive targets” in various areas of the Kingdom, including oil facilities.

At a time when the Saudi authorities announced that they had confronted a number of these attacks.