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| - Fact Check: This ISN'T a Hamas militant crashing into a high-voltage power line
Israel-Hamas War: The viral video is not related to the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict. It is from South Korea.
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India Today Fact Check
Conclusion: The viral video is not related to the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict. It is from South Korea.
Amid the Israel-Hamas conflict, a video of a paraglider crashing into a high-voltage electric power line and bursting into flames has been shared by many on social media.
Sharing the video, a Twitter user wrote, "Hamas paraglider crashes into a high-voltage electric power line and bursts into flames." The archived version of this post can be seen here. Several other tweets making similar claims can also be seen here, here, and here.
India Today Fact Check found that the viral video is not related to the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict. It is from South Korea.
Our Probe
A reverse search of keyframes from the viral video led to a news report published on the Chinese news outlet CQ News, dated June 19, 2023, where we found a screenshot of the viral video. Per the report, initially, the video was being shared on social media with the claim that it was from Laibin, China.
However, the Cyberspace Affairs Office of the Laibin Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China confirmed that no such incident occurred there. Later, another Chinese media outlet, Jimu News, confirmed that the incident took place in South Korea on June 16, 2023.
A keyword search on the internet led us to a news report published on the Korean news outlet Daum, dated June 16, 2023. Quoting the Jeju Fire and Safety Headquarters, the report stated that a 60-year-old man was caught in a high-voltage line and died while paragliding on a beach in Seongsan-eup, Seogwipo in South Korea that day.
Other Korean news outlets also reported the same information at the time.
We compared the viral video with the photos in the news reports and found the colour of the parachute, the number of electric poles, and the structure of the bushes to be the same in both. A comparison can be seen below.
Thus, it is safe to conclude that the viral video is not related to the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict.
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