Altered image falsely shared as “US aircraft carrier damaged by Houthi attack”

Yemen’s Houthi rebels claimed they launched a missile attack on the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower in the Red Sea on May 31, 2024. Washington has not confirmed that the aircraft carrier was the target.

The Iran-backed Houthis, who control large parts of Yemen, have carried out numerous drone and missile attacks on ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden since November, expressing their solidarity with the Palestinians in the Gaza war.

Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said in a statement on X that the move was in response to 16 people killed and more than 40 injured in the Yemeni port city of Hodeidah, including an unspecified number of civilians.

The death toll announced by the Houthis, which AFP could not independently verify, makes the attacks the deadliest since the US and Britain launched their campaign against the disruption of the vital trade route in January.

Similar posts containing the manipulated images garnered over two million views after being shared here and here on X, on YouTube, and on Weibo.

The claim was also shared in English and Thai, while AFP had previously debunked similar posts in Arabic.

However, according to reports from CBS News and Voice of America (archived links here and here), Washington rejected claims that the ship was damaged or hit.

Manipulated image

AFP noted that the circulating image matches Google Earth satellite imagery taken on April 10, 2023, from Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia, where the largest concentration of U.S. Navy naval forces is located (archive link here and here).

The Google Earth image showed no hole in the ship’s deck.

Below you can see a screenshot comparison between the image in the wrong posts (left) and the corresponding image from Google Earth (right) with the manipulated element highlighted by AFP:

A reverse image search on Google using a keyframe from the 13-second mark of the clipif you zoom in on the supposed hole, matches an image published on the US stock photo website Shutterstock (archived link).

The stock photo was mirrored and digitally added to the satellite images.

Below you can see a screenshot comparison between the alleged hole in the ship (left) and the horizontally mirrored stock photo (right):

AFP has debunked other false claims about Houthi attacks in the Red Sea here, here and here.