Claim: An image shows an article by The Daily Telegraph praising the Pakistan Air Force in the wake of the four-day military conflict between India and Pakistan which took place in May 2025.
Fact: The image is fake. The Daily Telegraph did not publish any such article.
On 11 May 2025, a user on X posted an image allegedly showing a clipping of an article from The Daily Telegraph. The headline of the article read:
“PAKISTAN AIR FORCE: THE UNDISPUTED KING OF THE SKIES”.
The post’s caption read:
“Indians came with Rafales, Pakistan responded with thunder. The world saw it but India will feel it for decades that they lost the battle!
Thats[sic] why The Daily Telegraph now calls Pakistan Air Force “the undisputed king of the skies” feared, respected, and remarkably efficient.”
The post circulated after the ISPR and initial news reports claimed that Pakistan had brought down multiple Indian Air Force (IAF) jets during an intensive air battle between the two nuclear-armed neighbours on 6 and 7 May 2025.
Pak-India military conflict
On 22 April 2025, 26 people, mostly tourists, were killed in Pahalgam in Indian-administered Kashmir. India blamed the attacks on Pakistan, whereas Pakistan denied any involvement and demanded a neutral investigation. Here is a timeline of the escalation that followed in the wake of the Pahalgam attacks:
- Soon after the Pahalgam attack, the Indian government announced the suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty. The landmark water-sharing treaty, which had been in place since 1960 had previously endured despite many instances of armed conflict between the neighbouring nuclear countries.
- In the early hours of 7 May, the Indian military launched ‘Operation Sindoor’ targeting multiple sites inside Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir. The missile strikes constituted the most serious escalation of military hostilities between the two nations since 1971, killing 40 civilians, including 15 children, and wounding 121 others according to Pakistani authorities.
- India claimed that their missiles struck nine “terrorist camps”, whereas Pakistan asserted that civilian neighborhoods were targeted in densely populated areas.
- Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif condemned the airstrikes, saying his country had “every right to give a robust response to this act of war imposed by India”.
- Soon after the Indian missile strikes, the Pakistani military announced that they had shot down five Indian warplanes including several Rafale Fifth Generation fighter jets. India has not yet responded directly to this claim, but a growing number of media outlets have confirmed that at least some Indians planes, including at least one Rafale, did in fact go down during the early morning hours of 7 May 2025.
- On the morning of 8 May, India launched a wave of drone attacks across Pakistan, killing at least one person and wounding several. Pakistan claimed that 25 Indian drones were shot down in different locations across the country and on the following day claimed that the number of drones shot down had grown to 77.
On 10 May 2025, United States President Donald Trump took to X (formerly Twitter) to announce a ceasefire between India and Pakistan. He stated that both countries had agreed to a “full and immediate ceasefire” after a “long night of talks mediated by the United States”. Later, both Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar and India’s Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri confirmed the ceasefire.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check first ran a reverse-image search of the news-clipping. The image had surfaced on Facebook, Instagram, X, and YouTube as early as 11 May 2025, just a day after the ceasefire between Pakistan and India was announced by US President Donald Trump. These users claimed that the article was indeed true.
We then conducted a keyword search on the website of The Daily Telegraph for “Pakistan Air Force”, “King of the skies”, and “Pakistan India conflict”. However, the results did not show the article in the claim.
We also compared the formatting in the image to the front page of the newspaper from 17 July 2025 and noted that the layout of the front page headline immediately looked very different in the original newspaper. The headline is aligned to the left and written in lowercase font, with multiple side-by-side columns. The date is also positioned above the newspaper logo and not below it.
A detailed analysis of the image revealed glaring issues that pointed to it being fake. We noticed that the image features extremely illegible words and numerous misspelled ones as well.
Below, the illegible words are underlined in red and the misspelt ones in green:
In the image above, two words in the subheading are illegible. Words like “performance” and “conflict” are misspelled. In the body paragraphs, basic words like “recent” and the publication’s own name are misspelled.
In addition, we noticed that the image of the fighter jet does not feature the Pakistani flag. The crescent appears excessively crooked and the star in front of it is missing.
Then, running the image through the InVID WeVerify tool also led to the conclusion that it was fake. The tool assessed the image with multiple algorithms, including Zero, GHOST, CAGI, Double Quantization, DCT, and BLOCK:
According to the results, the vast areas of blue-green shown in the results of multiple algorithms are evidence of the image being heavily tampered with.
Since the image also contains numerous formatting issues inconsistent with The Daily Telegraph’s official style, and a number of spelling errors and illegible words, Soch Fact Check concludes that the image is fake and rates this claim as false.
Virality
On X, the claim was shared here, here, here, and here.
On Facebook, the claim was shared here, here, here, here, here, and here.
On Instagram, the claim was shared here and here.
On YouTube, the claim was shared here, here, here, here, and here.
Conclusion: The image of an article in The Daily Telegraph, praising the Pakistan Air Force in the wake of the recent Pakistan-India conflict, has been heavily tampered with and is fake.
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Background image in cover photo: Al Jazeera