Old debunked video revived again as visuals of 2019 Pulwama terror attack - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
February 16, 2021
A video is being shared on social media claiming it as the visuals of 2019 terror attack at Pulwama. On 14 February 2019, 40 CRPF personnel were killed in a suicide bomber attack in the Pulwama district of Jammu and Kashmir. Let’s verify the claim made in the post.
Claim: Video of the attack on CRPF personnel at Pulwama on 14 February 2019.
Fact: The same video was found to exist on the internet at least since 2008. The uncropped original video has the time stamp of 2007 on it. But, the Pulwama attack on CRPF Jawans took place in February 2019. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.
When the screenshots of the current video were run through the Google reverse image search, a video with the same visuals was found in the search results. This video was uploaded on YouTube with the title – ‘VBIED IED SEP 02 2007 camp taji iraq huge explosion’, on 8 December 2008. We found another YouTube video, mentioning it as the truck bomb attack in Iraq. Further, the video posted on Facebook is cropped. In the video published on YouTube, the timestamp of ‘2007’ can be seen. Though we could not ascertain the exact details of where this attack took place, it can be concluded that this video is not related to the Pulwama attack of 2019.
Following the 2019 Pulwama terror attack, many misattributed videos were shared on social media claiming them as the visuals related to this attack. In 2020, when the same video went viral with a similar claim, FACTLY published a fact-check article on it. It can be seen here.
To sum it up, an old debunked video is revived again as the visuals of 2019 Pulwama terror attack.