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Videos and posts circulating on social media platform X on Tuesday claimed to show military vehicles being burnt by militants in Balochistan’s Mach. However, the video is from a clash between the PPP and MQM-P in Karachi on the night of Jan 28.
On January 30, 2024, Indian user Baba Banaras posted a six-second long clip on social media platform X, showing two vehicles set on fire and a soldier.
The post’s caption said: “Burning vehicles of the Pakistan Army can be seen in Mach [and] Bolan. According to the local sources, throughout the city, the sounds of explosions, gunfire, and cries towards the forces’ camps and posts can be heard”.
The post received over 24,000 views.
The iVerify Pakistan team sought to determine the veracity of the claim since it came right amid a terrorist attack in Mach, near Balochistan’s capital of Quetta, on the night of Jan 29 and the team observed that a number of users responded to the circulated visuals as being widely fake.
The iVerify Pakistan team found a video on YouTube published on Jan 29. The 11-second video showed the same two vehicles that were set on fire and the same visuals as in the shared video.
The iVerify Pakistan team next conducted keyword research using “MQM”, “PPP” and “clash” and found several news reports that shared either the clip or the screenshots from an incident.
According to a Jan 29 Dawn.com report, a worker of the MQM-Pakistan was killed while a PPP worker was wounded in a clash between the two parties during an election campaign in Karachi’s Nazimabad on the night of Jan 28.
Similarly, the iVerify Pakistan team observed that the shared image of the burning building was also denounced as being fake by users.
Conducting a reverse image search for the picture showed results from April 2021. The image was also available on stock photography agency Alamy.
The iVerify Pakistan team has determined that the claim — about both the burning vehicles and building on fire as being current imagery from the tense situation in Mach — is false.
This fact check has been published in partnership with iVerify Pakistan — a project of CEJ and UNDP
Published in Dawn, January 31st, 2024
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