Social media users are sharing a picture whose publishers claim that it shows swarms of locusts covering a man in Saudi Arabia during the past few days, according to what was reported. Fact-checking service in France Press.
The picture shows a man whose clothes are covered in yellow insects and spread around him over a wide area. The accompanying caption read, “Now circulating: locusts invade Saudi Arabia.”
The image received hundreds of posts from several pages on Facebook, after Saudi news websites published pictures of Jarad at Al-Sharia Stadium in Makkah Al-Mukarramah during the last match that brought together Al-Nasr and Al-Wehda clubs.
However, the National Center for the Prevention and Control of Plant Pests and Animal Diseases in Saudi Arabia stated that the locusts that appeared in the stadium do not harm agricultural crops. As for the circulated image, it has nothing to do with that, as the search indicated that it was published on social media pages in 2019, according to AFP.
It was taken by photographer Ahmed Al Maleh for the Saudi Al-Rai website in July 2019, and he re-published it on his Twitter account.
In another context, according to French AgencyAlso, users of social networking sites are circulating an image, whose publishers claim that it depicts a locust invasion in Saudi Arabia. However, this photo has nothing to do with Saudi Arabia and was taken in Yemen in 2019.
In the picture, a man is standing on the roof of a building with locusts covering the sky around him. The photo’s publishers commented, “News circulating now: locusts invade Saudi Arabia.”
The published picture is old and has nothing to do with Saudi Arabia. Distributed by AFP on July 28, 2019. It was taken in Yemen and shows a man trying to catch locusts from the roof of a building in Sana’a.
