An old video from Syria which shows a helicopter engulfed in flames, is going viral with a false claim that it shows the fatal helicopter crash that killed India's Chief Of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat and 12 others on Wednesday.
The video is viral hours after the Indian Air Force helicopter Rawat was travelling in crashed in Coonoor area of Tamil Nadu, killing him, his wife Madhulika and 11 other members of his staff. General Rawat was appointed as India's first Chief of Defence Staff on December 30, 2019 and was on his way to speak at the Wellington Staff College when the crash occurred.
The IAF in a statement released on Twitter said of the total 14 on board the chopper, only survived. The Indian Air Force has ordered an inquiry into the crash.
While actual footage of the wreckage surfaced soon after, another video went viral claiming to show the crash. The clip is being shared without any audio.
Also Read: Military Helicopter Carrying CDS Gen. Bipin Rawat Crashes In Tamil Nadu
The video, which shows a helicopter ablaze in the air and then crashing, is being shared with a false caption, "Bipin Rawat Helicopter Crashed In Tamil Nadu Video."
FACT CHECK
BOOM found that the video is from February 2020 with several reports suggesting that it is from Syria.
We first ran a reverse image search on a keyframe of the video and found a report in a defence news website - Overtdefense - published on February 18, 2020 about the incident.
According to Overtdefense, "Two Mi-8/17 helicopters used by the Syrian Air Force were downed in rapid succession during the Syrian Arab Army's offensive on the Idlib Governorate. The first helicopter was shot down over Southern Idlib on 11 February, with the second downed over Western Aleppo on 14 February. There were no survivors among the crews of both helicopters."
Also Read: Photo Does Not Show CDS Bipin Rawat's Helicopter Crash In Coonoor
The report carried several tweets which carried screen grabs from the same viral video. The tweet text claimed the helicopter was Syrian Air Force and shot down by rebel groups in Southern Idlib area of the country.
Using the keywords, 'Rebels shoot down helicopter in Idlib Syria', we ran a search on YouTube and found a story published by news outlet The Telegraph with the same video.
The video story published on Feb 11, 2020 was titled, 'Syrian helicopter shot down by rebels in Idlib' and shows the same sequence of events as in the viral video. The clip also has audio of men shouting in Arabic. One of the men can be heard saying "Allah-hu-Akbar".
