In April 2024, a video circulated on social media that allegedly showed an Iranian drone heading towards Israel but becoming entangled in wires in Iraq. We decided to check if this is true.
On the night of April 14 Iran launched more than 300 drones, cruise and ballistic missiles are targeting targets in Israel. The vast majority of them were shot down. Soon a video appeared on social networks, which allegedly showed just one of these drones. Netizens wrote that this drone did not reach Israel and got tangled in wires somewhere in Iraq. Telegram channels, in particular, wrote about this “Live broadcast"(853,000 views at the time of writing the analysis), "Pozdnyakov 3.0"(327,000), "Truthfulness"(203,000), "Uncle Slava"(194,000) and Voblya (155,000).
The 26-second video shows a drone stuck in wires from different angles. The authors of the video accompany the filming with exclamations in Arabic. There are no other objects visible in the frame, so we turned to Google reverse image search to determine the time and location of the video.
To the earliest entry that "Verified" was found - post on social network X, posted there on February 20, 2024 at 20:38 Moscow time, was not a video, but a screenshot from it. The author of the publication claims that the drone got stuck in wires in the Syrian province of Hasakah. Fact checkers from Lead Stories And AFP.
Earliest video found through Google reverse search appeared in X on the same day, February 20, but a little later, at 22:55. The author of this video, working in the region Kurdish journalist Zana al-Ali wrote that the drone crashed in the city of Qamar al-Din, located between Hasakah and Deir ez-Zor.
This location - the area between Hasakah and Deir ez-Zor - was also indicated many others users who posted videos on February 20 and 21, 2024.
Syrian opposition television channel Syria TV, reported about the fall of the drone on February 21, suggested that the drone was launched by pro-Iranian forces towards the Western coalition base located near the city of Ash-Shaddada. This settlement is located south of Hasakah. American military bases in Syria are constantly being attacked by drones: there have been such attacks in November 2023, and in February 2024 Moreover, most often the targets of attacks are bases in the northeast of Syria, in the area of Ash-Shaddada and Deir ez-Zor.
Thus, the viral video has nothing to do with the Iranian attack on Israel in April 2024. The video with the drone entangled in wires was filmed no later than February 20, and the incident itself occurred not in Iraq, but in the northeastern part of Syria.
Cover photo: social networks
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