Story:
Video of American Drone Attack on Qasem Soleimani
Other Versions
1. Video of Iran’ Commander Sulaimani’s End by US Army
2. Video of drone strike killing Iranian commander Sulaimani
Fact Check:
A video viral online purports to show American Drone Attack on General Qasem Soleimani blasting a convoy of vehicles and all the people in it. The video in this case is doing rounds on Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp among others. Despite the popularity, the video is not real – it’s just a footage from a video game.
Not Video of Drone Attack on Gen. Qasem Soleimani
The video in question shows a blasting of whole convoy of vehicles, following which a group of people appear to run away from the scene. Apparently, the blasting continues further trying to kill the people running away. In contrast to the claims, the video around 1 minute and 40 seconds does not show the US drone attack on a convoy of vehicles killing Gen. Qasem Soleimani and Commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. In fact, as of this writing, neither United States nor Iran released any video of the attack.
US President Donald Trump ordered the killing of Irani Gen. Qasem Soleimani
Interestingly, our search revealed the video in question circulated online earlier also in late 2017 as – Russia’s ‘evidence’ that the US is helping ISIS. Nonetheless, the video actually shows a video game footage. Byte Conveyor Studios, a video game development studio based in Argentina uploaded the video to YouTube in March 2015. While it carried the title “AC-130 Gunship Simulator – Convoy engagement,” accompanying description mentioned it’s a development preview of their upcoming game for mobile platforms. To clarify the same, the text appearing on upper right corner in the video reads – Development footage. This is a work in progress. All content subject to change.
As a matter of fact, this is not the first time a video game footage appeared online as a terror attack and became popular. For instance, a video in past alleged to show how skillfully an Airplane pilot in Algeria fails a terrorist attack on runway.
Related Videos of the US Attack
Al-Ahed, an independent Iraqi television network shared a CCTV footage purporting to show the moment US drone struck and killed Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.
The channel also shared on Twitter an aftermath video of the blast showing couple of vehicles burning in fire.
There’s also a photograph of the aftermath showing a burning vehicle near the Baghdad International Airport shortly after the strike. Reportedly, the US strike included 3 rockets hitting the site.
Aftermath of the US Drone strike at Baghdad International Airport
So, the video viral online does not show the US drone attack on Gen. Soleimani. It rather comes from an old video game footage. Notably, the video appeared earlier also with similar, false claims of terror attack.
Hoax or Fact:
Hoax.
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