Does a video on TikTok show a U.S. Navy ship burning after being struck by a Yemeni Houthi rebel missile on January 26, 2024? No, that's not true: The footage shown in the video is old and it shows the U.S. amphibious assault ship USS Bonhomme Richard on fire in 2020 at a dockyard in San Diego. There are no reports that a U.S. warship was struck off the coast of Yemen on January 26, 2024.
The claim appeared in a video on TikTok (archived here) published by @_paramax_ on January 26, 2024, with a caption translated into English from Bulgarian by Lead Stories staff that reads:
Houthi rebels attacked a US NAVY warship today
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Thu Feb 1 07:11:15 2024 UTC)
A reverse image search (archived here) of a still from the TikTok video on Google Lens on February 1, 2024, found that the footage can be traced back to the original video (archived here) posted on July 13, 2020, on the official U.S. Navy YouTube channel. A comparison of the frames shows a complete match of the scenes in the TikTok video and the one from 2020. According to the video description posted on the U.S. Navy channel, the burning ship is the amphibious assault ship USS Bonhomme Richard (LHD 6) (archived here). The footage shows the airborne attempts to extinguish the fire that started on July 12, 2020, in which over 60 sailors and civilians were injured (archived here).
The AP reported a U.S. Navy ship, the USS Carney, became the first U.S. warship to be targeted by a Houthi missile, but the projectile was intercepted and destroyed after it was fired on January 26, 2024 (archived here).
The video uploaded to TikTok has undergone digital alteration, including edits to extend the footage by looping some video sequences and mirroring the original by flipping the image. A large number "6" painted on the upper structure of the ship to indicate its designation as LHD (landing helicopter dock) 6 is shown in reverse image mode.
