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| - Fact Check: Old photos of crashed Pak Air Force jets shared as supposed recent attacks by India and Iran
There were no reports of either the Indian Air Force or the Iranian Air Force attacking Pakistani jets. Additionally, the images shared were all old.
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India Today Fact Check
Attacks on the PAF, either by India or Iran, have not been reported yet. All the images are old and from PAF crashes that occurred due to technical faults. The first and the last image are from a crash that took place in 2020. The other two images are from 2017.
A set of four images of crashed fighter jets went viral on social media with shocking claims: three Pakistani fighter jets were allegedly destroyed in a single night in different regions by Indian and Iranian air forces.
One Twitter user shared the photos on March 27, Claiming, “Bad night for #Pakistan, 3 fighter jets of #PAF destroyed in a single night. One jet was shot down by the #IAF on the #LOC, #neelumvalley, and two jets were shot down by #Iran on their border.”
Archived versions of some similar claims can be seen here.
The India Today Anti Fake News War Room (AFWA) found this claim to be false. One, at the time of writing this, there were no reports of either the Indian Air Force or the Iranian Air Force attacking Pakistani jets. Additionally, the images shared were all old.
AFWA Probe
We first looked for news reports on India gunning down Pakistani fighter jets but found nothing of this sort was reported any time recently. Subsequently, we reverse-searched the photos.
We found the first image on the top-left in a report published by Daily Pakistan on January 7, 2020.
The report said that the PAF FT-7 aircraft crashed near the Mianwali Air Base in the Punjab province of Pakistan due to a technical failure, claiming the lives of two Pakistani pilots, Haris bin Khalid and Ibaadur Rehman.
A reverse search of the second image — a black-coloured crashed jet on the top-right — on Yandex led us to a Pakistan Today report published on August 10, 2017.
The report noted that this fighter jet crashed in the Sabzazar area of Mianwali due to a technical failure as well. The crash killed Pakistani wing commander Mohammad Zeeshan.
The third image on the bottom left looked as if a jet crashed in a residential area. A reverse search of the image led us to results that suggested the same. The image was found in an article published by "Suchtv.pk" on August 17, 2017.
It mentioned that a PAF F-7 PG jet crashed in Sargodha when it was flown from Samungli Air Base for a training exercise. While the crash didn’t claim any lives, civilians or military, Lieutenant Bilal of the PAF suffered a leg fracture.
When we reverse searched the image on the bottom right, it took us to the same results as the first one. After comparing both, it became clear that both the first and the last images were from the same crash site.
While searching for related keywords, we found a Business Standard report that said a crash on March 22 killed two pilots of the PAF near the northwestern city of Peshawar. However, there was no mention of any kind of attack on the Pakistani Air Force.
Thus, it can be concluded that the images of crashed jets of the PAF have been shared with false claims.
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