Fake BBC tweet spreads false Macron quote claiming '60 million refugees will enter Europe'

Watch: Fake BBC News tweet attributes false quote to France's Macron

A fake BBC News tweet has been spread online, circulating a false quote from French president Emmanuel Macron as he campaigns for re-election.

France is in the midst of its presidential election, with Macron facing a harder-than-anticipated battle to retain his position against far-right candidate Marine Le Pen.

In the run-up to the vote on 24 April, a tweet was shared on Twitter showing a digitally altered post claiming to have been posted by the BBC on 11 April.

It reads: “France’s President Macron tells re-election audience, ‘Europe needs to be prepared to take up to 60 million refugees, over the next 20 years, from Africa and the Middle East,’ as he warns that sanctions on Russia are leading to economic collapse in Africa, which imports vast amounts of Russian wheat."

The doctored image included a photograph of Macron with BBC News branding in the bottom left corner.

Yahoo News UK can confirm that the tweet has been faked and has never been tweeted by the organisation.

The misleading post is the second in recent weeks targeting the BBC. Last week, the corporation urged people to ignore a fake video circulating online with BBC News branding that suggests Ukraine was responsible for a deadly missile attack on its own civilians.

Watch:

The video, which uses the BBC News logo and the same red and white coloured graphics as the broadcaster, gives the false impression that Ukrainian armed forces were behind a missile attack on a railway station in Kramatorsk, eastern Ukraine.

The BBC press office said: “We are aware of a fake video with BBC News branding suggesting Ukraine was responsible for last week’s missile attack on Kramatorsk train station.

“The BBC is taking action to have the video removed.

“We urge people not to share it and to check stories on the BBC News website.”

The mocked-up video, which was reported to have originated among pro-Kremlin accounts, was aired on Russian state TV and spread across social media.

The one minute and 27 second-long video showed a BBC-style explainer saying the missile serial number was similar to those fired by the Ukrainian army.

Underneath the text was graphic clips of bodies covering the ground in the aftermath of the explosion along with footage of damaged tower blocks across Ukraine and the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy walking with military personnel.

In another part of the video, the text refers to the Ukrainian president as “Zelenskyy”, but the BBC website spells his surname as “Zelensky”.

The fake video also claims that “military experts stress” that Ukraine is using “fake news to promote its position”.