Claim: A video shows the Pakistan army destroying an Afghan outpost during recent clashes between the neighbouring countries.
Fact: The video is old and was previously shared in context of the Russia-Ukraine war; therefore, it is not related to the recent clashes between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
An X user posted a video (archive) apparently showing Pakistani forces destroying an Afghan post amid the recent military escalation between the countries. A screenshot of the post is given below:
A user on X claiming the footage showed Pakistan destroying an Afghan post.
Afghanistan-Pakistan clashes
Afghan and Pakistani military forces exchanged heavy fire along the border on 11 October, marking a significant escalation between the neighbours.
The clashes reportedly erupted when Afghan troops attacked several Pakistani military posts along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in retaliation for the alleged airstrikes by Pakistan inside its territory on 9 October. Afghanistan accused Pakistan of violating its sovereign territory by carrying out airstrikes in Kabul, a charge that the latter has neither denied nor confirmed.
Soon after, social media users speculated that the airstrike was meant to target Noor Wali Mehsud, the leader of the banned Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan. It has not been independently verified if he was killed in the attack.
Pakistani forces retaliated against these attacks on 11 October.
Both sides made conflicting claims about the inflicted losses and casualties. Afghan authorities claimed that they had killed 58 Pakistani soldiers whereas Pakistan stated that 23 soldiers had been killed. Pakistan claimed that it had killed more than 200 “Taliban and affiliated terrorists.” But Zabihullah Mujahid, the spokesperson for the Taliban-led government, said that nine Afghan soldiers were killed in the overnight clashes with Pakistan. Soch Fact Check has not independently verified the casualties on both sides.
Pakistani authorities have long accused the Afghan Taliban government of harbouring the TTP that carries out attacks on Pakistani territory with impunity, a charge denied by Kabul.
Moreover, both countries also claimed to have destroyed each other’s border posts, Reuters reported.
On 15 October, Pakistan and Afghanistan reportedly continued to clash until agreeing to a temporary 48-hour ceasefire on the same day.
According to an AFP report, Afghan officials accused Pakistan of breaking the ceasefire by carrying out strikes inside Afghanistan on 17 October, which killed ten people and injured 12 others.
Then on 19 October, both neighbours agreed to an immediate ceasefire after peace talks in Doha, Qatar while further negotiations were scheduled to be held on 25 October in Istanbul, Turkey.
Although the border crossing between the two countries remains closed, it was only temporarily reopened for the repatriation of Afghan refugee families.
Geo News reported on 20 October that border crossings were likely to reopen. “The sources privy to the matter said that officials from both countries have agreed to reopen the border if no other dispute arises,” the report said.
Peace talks held in Istanbul between the two countries ended on 28 October without a resolution, Reuters reported.
Fact or Fiction?
In the comments on the X post making the claim, a user noted (archive) that the footage was old and reposted another X post of a user sharing a screenshot of an original video.
Soch Fact Check found and analysed the original post shown in the screenshot (archive). It was posted on 23 January 2023, by “Euromaidan Press”, an outlet publishing news on Ukraine. The description of the post reads: “Ukrainians halt the advance of Russian infantry with the help of an anti-tank weapon
Ukrainian-made anti-tank guided missile Stuhna stops the Russian attack cold somewhere in eastern Ukraine.”
The keyframe at 0:13 of the video being fact-checked is an exact match of the keyframe at 0:26 from the video shared by Euromaidan Press, as shown below:
On the left is the post sharing the false claim. On the right is the original image that was shared on 23 January 2023.
The X post by Euromaidan Press also provided a link to a Telegram channel, titled [translated via Google Translate] “NIP Tysk”. According to the channel’s description, the title stands for “National Information Portal ‘Tysk’”. The same footage was shared here on 22 January 2023, with the description [translated from Ukrainian via Google Translate]: “A strike on enemy infantry with the Stugna-P ATGM. Probably using a newly manufactured missile with a high-explosive fragmentation warhead.” An image of the post is given below:
A Telegram post shared the same video on 22 January 2023.
A Ukrainian website “www.stopcor.org” published an article, titled ‘Ukrainian soldiers fired a Stugna-P at Russian infantry: “Strike” with the new Ukrainian projectile (video)’ in January 2023. This article, published further down, includes an image that matches a keyframe of the clip from the claim and the video shared on Telegram.
Furthermore, this website also shared a link to another Telegram channel that posted the same footage on 23 January 2023 as the one shared by NIP Tysk Telegram channel, mentioned above.
Soch Fact Check, therefore, concludes that the video is unrelated to the recent Pakistan-Afghanistan clashes as it appeared as early as January 2023.
Virality
The X post garnered 139,100 views and 2,700 likes.
The video was shared on X here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
On YouTube here.
It was shared on Facebook here and here.
Conclusion: The video does not show the Pakistan Army destroying an Afghan post during recent clashes between the neighbouring countries. The footage was shared online as early as January 2023 in context of the Russia-Ukraine war.
Background image in cover photo: Anadolu Agency
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