Social media users have been sharing images and videos online of an explosion and claiming that it shows Minneapolis Police Department’s 3rd precinct building. This is untrue – the video dates to 2015 and is from Tianjin, China.
An example with a screenshot can be found can be seen here , while a video falsely tagged #minneapolisriots can be seen here .
The image of the explosion comes from 2015 in Tianjin China. The same image can be seen in a video on the BBC website captioned “An eyewitness captures the fear of those watching the explosions”, at the 6 second mark( here ).
There were two large explosions in the city of Tianjin. The blasts sent fireballs high into the sky and hurled flaming debris across the world’s 10th-largest port, burning out buildings and shattering windows kilometers away ( here ).
Footage of the Minneapolis police precinct that was on fire on May 28, 2020, can be seen ( here ). The image in the claim shows a clearly different urban areawith high-rise buildings, while the police precinct is surrounded by smaller buildings ( bit.ly/2XXzuvh ).
More images of the Minneapolis Police Department’s Third Precinct building can be seen ( here ).
The burning of the precinct came amid protests across the United States over the death of a black man, George Floyd, after police arrested him in Minneapolis on May 25( here ).
VERDICT
False. Images claiming to show a blast in Minneapolis were actually filmed in 2015 in Tianjin, China.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our work to fact-check social media posts here .
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.