A video showing helicopters being shot down by missiles is viral with the claim that it shows Hamas militants shooting down Israeli helicopters during its recent surprise offensive against Israel.
BOOM found this claim to be false; our fact-check reveals that the video has been taken from the video game Arma 3, and is not a real representation of the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas.
Over 700 people in Israel, and 400 people in the Gaza Strip have been reported dead at the time of writing this article, after Islamist militant group Hamas launched one of the biggest military offensives against Israel on October 7, 2023. Following this social media has been flooded with unverified imagery being linked to the ongoing conflict.
Multiple Indian users on X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook shared the viral clip with a Hindi caption, that translates to English as, "You would have never seen such scenes before in Palestine. Palestinian Haryat fighters shot down 4 Israeli war helicopters in Gaza and surprised the world with their preparedness..."
Find such posts on X here, here and here.
Find such posts on Facebook here, here and here. The same video was also shared with the same claim in Turkish captions (click here, here and here to view them).
Fact Check
BOOM found many users responding to some of the posts with the counterclaim that the video is from a video game called Arma 3, and does not show actual instances from the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas.
We ran a few keyframes from the video through reverse image search, which led us to the exact same video being shared by a user on YouTube, on October 4, 2023 - four days before the start of the conflict.
The video was titled "Two combat helicopters shot down by anti aircraft defense - Arma", and contained the hashtag #arma3, suggesting that it was taken from the video game Arma 3.
We looked through the YouTube channel of the user @KazinkkaWarrior, who had shared the video on YouTube, and found that the account routinely shares clips from Arma 3.
During past military conflicts, notably Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan, and Russia's invasion of Ukraine, BOOM has fact-checked multiple footage from Arma 3 circulating falsely as real scenes from the respective conflict.
Additional reporting by Sujith A.
