(Washington) Barely hours after the collapse of a bridge in Baltimore hit by a container ship on Tuesday, followers of conspiracy theories began to speak of a deliberate attack, despite the absence of any trace of an act criminal according to the authorities.
The Singapore-flagged ship struck a pier of the Francis Scott Key Bridge early Tuesday, which collapsed like a house of cards. Six people, workers who were repairing potholes in the infrastructure, are missing.
In the process, users of X and other platforms implicated a whole bunch of supposed perpetrators, from terrorists to Israel.
Among the most popular theories, that put forward by the British influencer born in the United States Andrew Tate, who assured his nine million subscribers on X that the container ship Dali had been the victim of a “cyber attack”.
“The lights go out and he deliberately heads towards the bridge pier,” says the masculinist influencer accused among others in Romania in a case of human trafficking by an organized gang.
“Foreign agents attack digital infrastructure. Nothing is untouchable,” he asserts.
Assumptions taken up by the founder of the conspiracy media InfoWars, Alex Jones.
“It seems deliberate to me. A cyberattack is likely. The Third World War has already begun,” assures the man who was convicted for questioning the reality of a massacre in the Sandy Hook elementary school in 2012 in the United States, in which 20 schoolchildren and six adults lost their lives. life.
No evidence of “terrorism”
The exact causes of the collapse remain to be determined, but the tragedy occurred when the ship suffered “a momentary loss of propulsion”, according to the Singapore port authorities.
CCTV footage shows the container ship’s lights go out twice in the minutes before the collision, as well as smoke around the ship. In these impressive images, we see the ship deviate from its course and hit a pile of the structure, causing several of its arches to collapse into the waters of the port.
The authorities immediately assured that they had not detected any malicious act.
“There is absolutely no indication that this was a terrorist act,” said Richard Worley, Baltimore police chief.
And according to Maryland State Governor Wes Moore, there is “no credible evidence of a terrorist attack.”
But these statements did not prevent the deluge of rumors about a resolution demanding an “immediate ceasefire” in Gaza, a Palestinian territory devastated by war.
“Did Israel just hit the US for not using its veto yesterday? », Asks a user in a publication consulted by more than 300,000 accounts.
Others see the hand of the Islamic State group while some question the initiatives in favor of diversity taken by certain companies. Still others say the bridge collapse is a “decoy” to distract people.
Synergy Marine Group, operator of the container ship, which was helped by two Port of Baltimore pilots at the time of the collision, said the causes were still being determined. No crew members were injured.
Experts have expressed doubts about the strength of the bridge, several arches of which have been destroyed along a large length.