Have you seen that video of a “sniper” in France? It’s gone viral on Twitter, with over 3 million people watching it on Friday alone. But the video has nothing to do with the unrest that’s happening in the country after a French police officer shot and killed a teenager.
“Wtf is going on in France?” the Twitter account Clown World asked while sharing the video, which has received over 2.8 million views.
“Snipers spotted on French rooftops,” another Twitter account called Spriter Team, with hundreds of thousands of views, claimed on Friday.
But the video is actually from March and has nothing to do with the riots currently happening in France. HoaxEye, a Twitter account that tracks fake videos on social media, was the first to point out the hoax late Friday. The original video from March appears to be a joke about the video game Call of Duty, and was originally posted to TikTok.
France is currently experiencing a wave of civil unrest after footage emerged of a French police officer shooting and killing a 17-year-old boy of Algerian descent during a traffic stop on Tuesday. The boy, identified only by his first name Nahel, was shot at point-blank range while allegedly trying to drive off during incident with police.
France has seen three nights of riots, with 875 people arrested on Thursday night alone, according to CBS News. French President Emmanuel Macron called for calm on Friday, stating that “Nothing justifies violence.”
“There is an unacceptable instrumentalization of the death of a teenager, which we all deplore, when the period should be one of meditation and respect,” Macron said, according to CBS News.
The 38-year-old officer who killed Nahel filed a police report that the 17-year-old had tried to run him over. But that explanation was contradicted by the cellphone video that later emerged of the incident. The officer has been arrested and is being investigated for involuntary manslaughter, according to the English-language French news outlet France24.
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