The false French riot posts spreading online

France has seen different nighttime of unrest aft the fatal shooting by constabulary of a 17-year-old lad successful a Paris suburb.

Images of the unrest, which has dispersed to different French cities, are being shared connected societal media. As good arsenic genuine video, mendacious and misleading claims are besides circulating, with the imaginable to summation tensions.

BBC Verify has been investigating immoderate of these.

A striking representation showing a radical of young men driving a French constabulary van, with 1 hanging retired of the model brandishing a gun, has been shared connected Twitter with the words "France, photograph of the day".

The tweet, posted aboriginal connected 2 July had implicit 1.7m views but it's mendacious - it's not from the existent riots successful France but is really a inactive from a film.

BBC Verify examined the representation and, searching for erstwhile versions of it connected the internet, recovered it was from the French film, Athena - a fictional relationship of rioting successful a metropolis suburb - made successful 2022.

The radical successful the van and the bluish motorcycle are precisely the same.

The idiosyncratic who posted the tweet aboriginal clarified that the representation was meant to beryllium of an "illustrative" nature, but not earlier it had been retweeted thousands of times.

They subsequently deleted it.

Footage of cars falling from the windows of a multi-storey car parkland has been wide shared online, with the message: "WTF is going connected successful France…".

This is mendacious - it is aged footage and it looks similar it has travel from different film.

BBC Verify took images of the video and carried retired an online hunt to spot if it had appeared before. The hunt brought up a tweet from June 2016, which claimed the footage was from the acceptable of the enactment movie, Fast and Furious 8 - which was filmed successful Cleveland, Ohio. Using the accusation successful that tweet, BBC Verify located the footage to a multi-storey car parkland connected Prospect Avenue East successful Cleveland.

The colours of the cars and the extracurricular of the gathering lucifer a country from the film, which came retired successful 2017.

Old footage of a "sniper"

Over the past fewer days, a video has been shared repeatedly connected Twitter and the messaging app, Telegram showing a hooded man, connected a rooftop pointing what appears to beryllium a rifle.

One Twitter idiosyncratic posted the video with the accompanying message: "Rioter successful France takes up sniper presumption with stolen constabulary rifle." Another relationship claims the firearm was stolen from a constabulary van.

A Telegram idiosyncratic displayed the occurrence emoji adjacent to the French emblem and stated: "looters covered by a sniper."The video has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times crossed antithetic platforms and accounts, and retweeted thousands of times.

But the video was not filmed during the existent disturbances, it is aged footage.

By searching for erstwhile instances of the video connected societal media, BBC Verify tin corroborate it was posted connected Twitter connected 13 March, 2022.

The man's clothing, presumption connected the rooftop and disposable buildings are identical successful some tweets.

It wasn't imaginable to corroborate the nonstop determination oregon whether the firearm was existent oregon a replica gun.

One Twitter user, alert of the earlier instances of this video, commented that the alleged sniper indispensable person "been determination implicit a twelvemonth now."

BBC Verify is looking astatine different examples of mendacious and misleading posts astir the French riots.

Reporting by Frey Lindsay and Shayan Sardarizadeh.