Mainstream media outlets aired old and unrelated footage from Israeli airstrikes on Gaza misreporting it as visuals of India's airstrike on Pakistan, as part of 'Operation Sindoor'.
BOOM found that the viral footage actually shows Israeli airstrikes on Gaza from October, 2023, and is unrelated to the current India-Pakistan conflict.
The video is also viral on Facebook, X and WhatsApp with the same false claim that it shows India's military response to the recent attack on tourists in Kashmir's Pahalgam.
In retaliation to the attack on Indian tourists in Pahalgam, India launched "Operation Sindoor" in the early hours of May 7, 2025, with precision strikes being carried out on bases and infrastructure linked to cross-border militants, said the Indian government and army representatives.
Indian defence forces in a press briefing confirmed that the key locations hit were Bahawalpur in Punjab province (a Jaish-e-Mohammed stronghold and birthplace of leader Masood Azhar), Muridke near Lahore (base of Lashkar-e-Taiba and home to the Markaz-e-Taiba complex), and Kotli and Muzaffarabad in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir.
In this backdrop, multiple news channels and social media accounts shared the viral video—showing a series of massive explosions—with captions suggesting it showed recent footage of Indian airstrikes against Pakistani targets.
The viral video was shared by Hindi news channel AajTak, with a Hindi caption claiming the footage shows the 'destruction of a terrorist base' of Pakistani extremist group Jaish-e-Mohammed.
Click here to view an archive of the above post.
The entire video and some screenshots were also published as web stories by Business Today (archive), Amar Ujala (archive) and ABP News (archive).
TV9 Network Executive Editor Aditya Raj Kaul and several other social media users on shared the video on YouTube and Instagram too.
India's ruling party the Bharatiya Janata Party shared a collage of nine videos, claiming them to be the nine different proofs of the strikes on Pakistan. However, third clip, starting at the 0:17 mark showed the viral footage from Gaza instead. BOOM also found the first clip to be from Iran's missile strikes on an Israeli airbase on October 1, 2024.
FACT CHECK
Footage From Israel Airstrike Against Gaza
BOOM ran a reverse image search on keyframes from the viral video and found videos from October 2023, that closely resembled the footage being reported by media outlets as part of India's 'Operation Sindoor' military exercise.
One such post by Afghan news outlet Kabul News shared the exact same footage on October 23, 2023 with a caption that depicted the footage as Israeli airstrikes on Gaza.
The post had a caption in Pashto, which translates in English to, "Israel intensified its bombing of Gaza last night. According to Palestinian media reports, 400 people, including women and children, lost their lives in the bombing last night, and hundreds more are still under collapsed buildings."
Looking through the search results, we found another post on X by BBC Verify journalist Shayan Sardarizadeh, who claimed that the video was from Gaza, but '10 days older' than what was being reported, making the date of the origin of the footage October 13, 2023.
Taking cue from this, we ran an advanced search on X with keywords "Israel airstrikes Gaza" while looking for posts shared on October 13, 2023. This led us to a large number of accounts sharing the exact same footage
Click here, here, here and here to view the above posts.
These results confirm that the viral footage has been shared in the context of Israel's airstrikes on Gaza on October 13, 2023, and is unrelated to the ongoing military tensions between India and Pakistan.
