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| - Fact Check: This video does not show Taliban misadventure with American weapons
A video of two men losing control of a mounted heavy machine gun is doing the rounds on social media, with the claim that it was one of the US weapons captured by the Taliban. India Today Anti Fake News War Room (AFWA) has found that the video is not linked to the ongoing crisis in Afghanistan.
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India Today Fact Check
The video is viral since 2017 with claims that it was shot somewhere in Iraq. However, it is true that high-end American military equipment worth millions of dollars are now in Taliban hands after the US exited Afghanistan.
Highly sophisticated weaponry worth millions of dollars left behind by United States forces in Afghanistan are now in Taliban hands. Amid reports of US troops dismantling some of their choppers and other high-end military equipment before retreat, the million-dollar question now is whether the Taliban will be able to operate them.
In this context, a video of two men losing control over a mounted heavy machine gun is circulating on social media with the claim that this was one of the US weapons captured by the Taliban. The video shows men scurrying for cover as bullets fly all around.
“Some toys which the Americans left behind in Afghanistan,” reads one such sarcastic caption along with the video.
India Today Anti Fake News War Room (AFWA) has found that the video is not linked to the ongoing crisis in Afghanistan. This clipping has been circulating on the Internet since 2017 with claims that it was shot somewhere in Iraq.
Tracing the viral video
Using reverse image search, we found that several people have shared the video on various social media platforms over the last four years.
It’d first appeared on the video-sharing platform LiveLeak in June 2017. Although the platform does not exist anymore, multiple reports with screenshots of the same video from LiveLeak suggest the video went viral after it appeared there.
According to these reports, the video is believed to have been recorded somewhere in Iraq. We found that the video also appeared on a Turkish news website in June 2017, which also suggested that the video was shot in Iraq.
We could not independently verify the location of the video, but since it is available on the Internet since 2017, we can conclude that it is not linked to the United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan.
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