A video showing a helicopter being shot down by a ground weapon is viral online with the false claim that it shows Hamas militants attacking an Israeli helicopter. BOOM found that the claims are false and the clip is a simulation from a video game called Arma 3.
Since October 7, at least 2,600 Palestinians and 1,400 Israelis have been killed in the conflict between Israel and Hamas. Israel has cut off the supply of essentials to Gaza, and the United Nations has warned that hospitals have only 24 hours worth of reserve fuel left to continue operations.
The 17-second clip shows a man operating a ground weapon and shooting down a helicopter flying in the sky. A caption on X (formerly Twitter) reads, "NEW VIDEO : Hamas fighters shooting down Israel war helicopter in Gaza."
Click here to view the post and here for an archive.
The post is also circulating on Facebook with similar captions.
Click here to view the post.
FACT CHECK
BOOM found that the claims are false and the video is from Arma 3, a simulation video game.
BOOM has previously debunked similar several clips from Arma 3 that were falsely linked to the Israel-Hamas conflict. Read here and here.
Taking a cue from this, we ran a keyword search on YouTube using 'helicopter shot down' and 'Arma 3' and found a Shorts video shared on February 27, 2023 by a channel called RIMStudio. The video was titled 'KA-50 Battle helicopter shot down by FIM-92F Advanced Stinger Missile l St.77 MilSim ARMA3' and was an exact match to the viral video. Arma 3 is a tactical shooting simulation game developed by Czech company Bohemia Interactive.
Here is a comparison between the viral video and the original video:
The description of the video carried the hashtag #Arma3 while mentioning that it was merely a video game simulation and not real.
We also found that the channel RIMStudio regularly shared similar video game simulations. See here.