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| - Fact Check: No, this video doesn't show the last moments of Azerbaijan plane crash
This video of passengers praying together inside a flight has no link to the Azerbaijan plane crash. This is a months-old video of an Algerian flight that had landed safely.
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India Today Fact Check
This video has nothing to do with the Azerbaijan crash. It is from a different flight that was reported to have technical issues but landed safely in Algeria back in September 2024.
In a rare gesture, Russia's President Vladimir Putin apologised to Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev on December 28, calling the crash of an Azerbaijani plane in Kazakhstan a "tragic incident" that killed 38 of the 67 people onboard.
On December 25, the plane is believed to have come under fire from Russian air defence systems targeting Ukrainian drones. After being hit, the plane was forced to divert towards the Caspian Sea but, soon after, crash-landed near Aktau airport in Kazakhstan. Now, a video allegedly showing the last moments just before the crash is going viral on social media.
The video in question features people sitting on their seats in a plane and chanting 'Allahu Akbar' in unison. Oxygen masks for the passengers could be seen hanging in the air. The text inside the video read: "Azerbaijan Airlines plane crashes. Allah Hu Akbar."
India Today Fact Check, however, found that this video has nothing to do with the Azerbaijan crash. It was from a different flight that was reported to have technical issues but landed safely in Algeria.
OUR PROBE
Reverse searching keyframes from the viral video led us to several Facebook posts from September 2024 with the same video. Their caption in Arabic stated that an Air Algeria plane had to return to the airport due to a technical malfunction after takeoff. So, it is clear that this video predates the Azerbaijan crash by at least three months.
Further searches led us to some news reports about this incident. According to them, the passengers on an Air Algerie plane sat in their seats, praying together after they were informed of a technical malfunction in the plane. On September 22, 2024, Flight AH3018 reportedly took off from Houari Boumediene International Airport, also known as Algiers International Airport. The plane was heading to Istanbul, Turkey, but it had to return an hour after takeoff, owing to a technical snag in the aircraft.
The reports also carried the official statement of the Air Algerie airline, which stated that due to a technical malfunction, flight AH3018 had to return to the Algerian airport as a precautionary measure to ensure the safety of passengers and crew after it took off on the night of September 22. The company provided accommodation to the passengers until a new flight was arranged for them on September 23. No casualties were reported in the incident.
We also found multiple videos of this incident, shot by different passengers, in X posts from the time of the incident. The videos showed them praying and shooting videos on their mobiles from their seats.
It is thus, clear that a three-month-old video of a different flight was falsely linked to the recent Azerbaijan crash.
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