As deadly skirmishes broke out on the Afghan-Pakistan border in December, an old video made the rounds in social media posts that falsely claimed it showed an Afghan soldier shooting down a Pakistani helicopter. The video racked up tens of thousands of views, but in fact previously surfaced in 2016 in reports about a Kurdish fighter downing a Turkish army chopper.
“When America fled Afghanistan, it left all its equipment and modern weapons at military bases there. Among them is the dangerous Stinger missile which is a very effective heat-seeking missile fired from the shoulder,” read a Hindu-language X post from December 29.
“Yesterday, the Afghans shot down a Pakistan army helicopter with the Stinger missile, killing 15 soldiers inside.”
The post, which garnered more than 150,000 views, showed footage of a man launching a missile from a shoulder-mounted weapon, before the camera pans to a helicopter that spins out of control and crashes to the ground.
Screenshot of the false post, taken on January 2, 2025
The video spread on Facebook and X after a Pakistani paramilitary soldier was killed and seven others wounded in December in the latest cross-border exchanges of fire with Afghanistan’s forces (archived link).
Border tensions between the two countries have escalated since the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in 2021.
During the NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan that year, weapons and heavy military equipment were left behind by foreign troops — but there have been no reports of Afghan forces shooting down a Pakistani helicopter.
Turkish chopper
However, a reverse image search of the video on Google found it was filmed years before the skirmishes on the Afghan-Pakistan border.
A longer version of the clip was published by The Washington Post newspaper on May 15, 2016 (archived link).
“Video appears to show Kurdish militants shooting down Turkish military helicopter,” the video is titled.
“Media affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a leftist militant group battling the Turkish state, posted a video purporting to show a fighter downing a Cobra attack helicopter with a man-portable air-defence system — or MANPADS — in the mountains of southeastern Turkey on Friday morning,” the description said.
Below is a screenshot comparison of the video as seen in the false post (left) and on the Washington Post website (right):
Screenshot comparison of the video as seen in the false post (left) and on the Washington Post website (right)
The video was credited to Gerilla TV, which is associated with the PKK and whose logo can also be seen on the top-left corner of the video.
The clip was also published on Gerilla TV’s website with a title saying it shows a Turkish aircraft being shot down on May 13, 2016 (archived link).
The Turkish army said on May 19, 2016, that two of its pilots were killed when their Cobra helicopter went down during fighting in an area close to the Iraqi border (archived link).
AFP has previously debunked another false claim that shared the same clip.