A short video clip is going viral on social media with the claim that it shows the Afghanistan Taliban government shooting down a Pakistan Air Force helicopter near the Durand Line, amid a recent escalation in tensions along the frontier between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The claim is false. The video is old and unrelated to the current situation.
Claim
On December 28, 2024, a user on X (formerly known as Twitter) posted a 17-second video showing a helicopter spinning out of control and then crashing. The user captioned the clip: “Pakistani Airforce helicopter shot down by the elite commandos of the Afghan Taliban along the disputed Durand Line.” The post has been viewed nearly 700,000 times and reposted over 300 times to date.
Identical claims can be found here, here, and here.
Fact
The video being circulated dates back to at least 2023 and has no connection to the recent escalation of hostilities between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
In the past few weeks, the Pakistani military has launched airstrikes into Afghanistan’s Paktia province, reportedly targeting hideouts of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). Pakistan blames the terror group for waging deadly attacks against Pakistani security forces and civilians from its sanctuaries in Afghanistan.
A reverse image search reveals that the video was first published online on September 4, 2023 and is not recent. According to various media reports, the video shows a helicopter crash near Gwadar, Balochistan in 2023.
This incident was also covered by Geo News, which reported that two officers and a soldier of the Pakistan Navy were martyred in a crash during a routine training flight in Balochistan’s Gwadar due to a technical failure.
The same was reported by international media outlets AP News and Arab News.
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