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AS THE NATIONS of India and Pakistan continue to clash, fake stories of bombings, deaths, and protests that didn’t happen have spread on social media.
The death toll from India and Pakistan’s biggest skirmishes in decades passed 50 today, with each country accusing the other of sending waves of drone attacks to each other.
The escalation between the nuclear-armed rivals follows an April attack on tourists in the Indian-run part of the disputed territory of Kashmir that killed 26 people, as well as Indian air strikes on militant camps last Wednesday.
Pakistan has rejected claims by India’s government that it was behind last month’s attack, saying the gunmen acted on their own, and called for an independent investigation.
India and Pakistan have fought several wars over Kashmir, which has been split since 1947 when British colonial rule ended and which both countries claim in full.
Today, Pakistan’s foreign ministry spokesman blamed India for, in his words, bringing “the two nuclear-armed states closer to a major conflict”.
Since the latest round of clashes began, each side has made claim and counterclaim, often about how they had successfully repulsed attacks, or about military strikes by the opposing side, and claims that such attacks justify future “counterattacks”.
How many of these attacks, which are typically said to have been carried out on isolated military posts, have actually occurred has been the subject of numerous fact-checking exercises by media in the area.
However, while the rest of the world watches to see if the conflict will escalate, misinformation has obscured views of what is happening in the region, as well as having the ability to escalate tensions themselves.
Many social media posts have featured images alongside claims that they show the ongoing conflict – but a lot of these are incorrect.
Although US officials believe that Pakistan shot down multiple Indian aircraft this week (a claim the Indian government has not confirmed), photos and videos that supposedly show the aftermath of those strikes are old.
These show images from other crashes that long predate the current conflict, such as Indian Air Force jet crashes in 2021 and 2024.
Another video, said to show a Pakistani pilot that had been shot down, was traced to an incident where a pilot ejected after his jet malfunctioned in the city of Vehari, hundreds of miles away from where clashes were reported.
“Pakistan army shot down an Indian passenger plane near Pakistan’s Karachi airport today, killing everyone,” reads the caption of a Facebook video that shows crowds gathered on the street as smoke rises from behind apartments.
Karachi is the largest city in Pakistan, located on its southern coast, on the opposite side of the country from Kashmir.
However, the video included in that post was traced back to 2020, and while it did show the aftermath of an aircraft crash in Karachi, it was a commercial airline disaster rather than the result of a military clash.
Posts that try to pass off these old or unrelated images as new have accumulated hundreds of thousands of views each on the social media platform X.
Although these images at least show incidents that happened in the area, the majority of false images said to show the Indian-Pakistan conflict come from another conflict entirely.
Many of the images that supposedly show destruction in the conflict over Kashmir actually repurpose videos from the current Israeli invasion of Gaza — a more than 18-month offensive that is believed to have killed almost 55,000 Palestinian people and more than 1,000 Israelis.
Re-used images from the conflict in the India-Pakistan context include footage of nighttime missile strikes, which were described in a post on X that has been viewed more than 1,900,000 times to date as showing India “firing missiles at 9 sites, both in Pakistan and Kashmir”.
The footage is actually old, and was reported in 2023 as showing a bombing in Gaza by the Israeli military at the start of their invasion after 7 October.
Another post, viewed more than 37,200 times to date, showed an urban area with the caption “Sialkot is burning”.
However, rather than showing the Pakistani border city of Sialkot, the images were published in 2021 and described as showing explosions in Gaza City.
Other images that have been repurposed alongside claims that they show recent Indian military operations include Israeli raids on Beit Lahia, a city near the northern border of Gaza, in October 2023 and a bombing at the Indonesian hospital in Gaza in November 2023.
Images of a 2020 explosion in Beirut were also falsely described as showing an Indian attack.
Footage from a 2023 Pakistani broadcast, in which a news anchor laments the deaths of Palestinians, was also reshared with a false description. This claimed the context of the footage was that the anchor had been brought to tears by Indian attacks on her country.
There have also been videos of dramatic airfights and bombings that sharp-eyed viewers recognised as seeing somewhere before. The source for them was the realistic war simulation video game Arma 3.
The official government of Pakistan X account even shared the computer game footage as if it was real.
However, much of the misinformation spread by English language social media users has less to do with the conflict itself, but how it could impact the western world.
“Pakistani protests have started – IN ENGLAND…..,” reads one X post viewed more that has been viewed more than 441,800 times since being posted on 7 May. “This is going to get messy.”
The video shows hundreds of people thronging the streets, some waving huge Pakistani flags.
However, the video is old. The shopfronts seen in the video are also available in older images of the Curry Mile in Manchester on Google Maps Street View, but do not appear from 2024 pictures onward.
The footage doesn’t even appear to show a protest, and seems to be of Pakistani Independence Day celebrations that are held annually in the area.
US President Trump has also been the subject of misinformation in the Indian-Pakistan conflict, with clips of him saying “let them fight” posted to X on May 7 described as showing “Trump’s response to India and Pakistan fighting.”
These posts appear to be supportive of Trump’s supposed position; one post featuring the video that has more than 1,500,000 views reads: “Trump is right. Let India cleanse Pakistan of terrorism!”
However, while the clip is real, it is old, and Trump is not talking about the Kashmir conflict.
An archive video of Trump’s comments, published six years ago, can be found on YouTube. At about the 76-minute mark, Trump starts talking about the Taliban and ISIS.
“We have an area that I brought up with our generals four or five weeks ago, where Taliban is here, ISIS is here,” Trump says. “And they’re fighting each other. I said, ‘Why don’t you let them fight?’ Why are we getting in the middle of it? I said, “Let them fight. They’re both our enemies. Let them fight.’
‘Sir, we want to do it,’ Trump says, impersonating a general.
“They go in and they end up fighting both of them. It’s the craziest thing I’ve ever seen. I think I would’ve been a good general, but who knows?”
Although Trump does mention both India and Pakistan in the longer footage, it is clear that the armies he said he wants to let fight are the Taliban and ISIS.
With reporting from AFP.
The Journal’s FactCheck is a signatory to the International Fact-Checking Network’s Code of Principles. You can read it here. For information on how FactCheck works, what the verdicts mean, and how you can take part, check out our Reader’s Guide here. You can read about the team of editors and reporters who work on the factchecks here.
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