Old video of shelling viral as Indian army retaliating against Pakistan after Pahalgam attack

A day after the deadly terrorist attack at Baisaran valley, near Pahalgam, Kashmir (on April 22) killed at least 26, a video showing a group of army men using a cannon to fire mortar shells was widely shared on social media.

Social media users amplifying this video claimed that Pakistani soldiers were killed in “retaliatory measures” by the Indian army in the Tatta Pani sector of Kashmir, along the Line of Control (LoC).

X user @RealBababanaras posted the viral video and claimed that at least 12 Pakistani soldiers were killed, while 3 army posts and 2 artillery posts were destroyed in the Tatta Pani sector. At the time of this article being written, the post has racked up over 550,000 views and has been reshared more than 1,000 times. Readers should note that Alt News has debunked misinformation shared by this user several times. (Archive)

Another X user @JSMSHIVA107 also posted the video with similar claims. The X post was later deleted. (Archive)

Other X users also posted the video with the same claim. (Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

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The claim was also viral on Facebook.

Click to view slideshow.

Readers should note that these claims followed reports by a few news outlets, including News18 and Republic, that the Pakistan army had violated the ceasefire in the Tatta Pani sector of Poonch. However, this incident was not reported by most major news agencies nor shared by the Indian Army on its X account. Resistance Front, an offshoot of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba, claimed responsibility for the April 22 terror attack in Kashmir.

Fact Check

To check the veracity of the claim, Alt News ran a reverse image search on one of the key frames from the viral video. This led us to a Facebook post from April 15, 2020, featuring the same video that was recently shared. A fan page of the Indian Air Force, IAF Garud, had posted the video.

 

The key frame search also led us to a video uploaded by Republic Bharat on its official YouTube channel on June 14, 2020. A mirror-image of the same footage that is now viral was used in the video.

While showing this footage, the Republic anchor said that the Pakistani army had violated ceasefire at several locations in Kashmir, including Rampur, Poonch and Uri. The news outlet did not specify whether the footage was representative or of a different incident.

Based on these findings, we were able to conclude that the footage of shelling is at least five years old. While the incident could be older, the earliest digital trace of the footage we were able to find is from April 15, 2020. Alt News was unable to locate the exact place shown in the footage

To sum up, an old video, available on the internet since at least April 2020 is now viral after the recent terrorist attack in Kashmir’s Pahalgam.

The post Old video of shelling viral as Indian army retaliating against Pakistan after Pahalgam attack appeared first on Alt News.

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