ISLAMABAD: Videos which have been viewed hundreds of thousands of times on Facebook and YouTube, and published by mainstream media in both India and Pakistan, show military jets flying at night and dropping what appear to be bombs.
They went viral as India claimed Tuesday it had launched an air strike which killed a large number of militants in Pakistan, a claim which Islamabad has denied and which sent tensions soaring between the nuclear-armed arch-rivals.
Indian social media posts and television channels claim the videos show Indian fighter jets carrying out strikes in Pakistan; Pakistani Facebook posts and newspapers say the footage shows Pakistani jets chasing Indian military planes out of their airspace.
All the claims are false; the videos are actually from a 2014 demonstration by the Pakistani Air Force for Independence Day celebrations in Islamabad.
What are we verifying?
The first misleading video shows what appears to be an F-16 jet flying through the night sky and firing what could be bombs or flares into the darkness.
Pakistani’s mainstream Urdu-language newspaper, Nawa-i-Waqt, posted the video on its Facebook page, where it had been viewed more than 17,000 times in the six hours since it was published.
The post’s caption says: “Immediate and timely flights by Pakistan air force planes. Indian planes ran away: DG ISPR”. “DG ISPR” stands for Director General Inter Services Public Relations, or Pakistan’s military spokesman.
The same video was posted on an Indian Facebook account alongside claims it showed the Indian Air Force bombing “terror camps”.
The video has been posted repeatedly on Facebook in both countries.
A second video which was posted on Pakistani Facebook page SiasiTV, where it has been viewed more than 20,000 times in the two hours since it was published, contains similar footage of a warplane flying at night.
The caption on the post claims it shows the Pakistani air force responding to the Indian incursion.
The exact same footage was also posted by an Indian Facebook account, where it has been viewed 36,000 times in the five hours since it was published. The caption says: “Indian Airforce Attacks Pakistan”.
An Indian regional television channel from Gujarat, Morbi News, also posted the footage on their YouTube channel. — AFP
