Old video from Turkey falsely shared linking to Iranian President’s helicopter crash

The viral video shows a Kurdish militant shooting down a helicopter in May 2016. It is unrelated to Iran.

Ebrahim Raisi and Iran's Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian and six other passengers and crew were killed in the helicopter crash near the Iranian-Azerbaijan border. Following this incident, many posts and videos are going viral on social media. One such video is now going viral showing a helicopter going up in flames before crashing to the ground. The users who shared the video linking it to Iranian President’s fatal helicopter crash. Caption of the post states, “The Iranian president's helicopter was attacked by a missile”.

But Fact Crescendo found the viral claim false. Let’s check the truth.

The Iranian president's helicopter was attacked by a missile.#iran#Raïssi pic.twitter.com/ozmvn0GcJR

— Syed Murtaza Alee (@syedmurtazaalee) May 20, 2024

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Fact Check-

We started our investigation by running a reverse image search on Google, and whose results led us to a report by The Washington Post published on 14 May, 2016 which carried a longer version of the viral video. The video shows a man shooting a missile targeting a helicopter from the ground, and the helicopter can be seen falling into a mountainous area. At the timestamp of 0:36 seconds, we can see the viral video.

Description states, “Media affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), a leftist militant group battling the Turkish state, posted a video purporting to show a fighter downing a Cobra attack helicopter with a man-portable air-defense system — or MANPADS — in the mountains of southeastern Turkey”.

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Upon further search, we found the longer version of the video on the Facebook account of Al-Qabas, a media based in Kuwait. The post was shared on 16 May, 2016. It reported that the Turkish army's AH-1W Super Cobra helicopter was flying over mountainous terrain when it was shot down by a surface-to-air missile by a Kurdish fighter. The caption added that the original footage was released by the Gerilla channel, reportedly run by the PKK.

We also found the same video on Zee News' YouTube channel

Taking account of these details, we can understand that the video is old and has no connection to Iranian President’s helicopter crashing. The cause of the crash has not yet been disclosed by the Iranian government, though preliminary reports states bad weather and dense fog were to blame.

Conclusion-

Fact Crescendo found the viral claim made along with the images to be False. The viral video shows a Kurdish militant shooting down a helicopter in May 2016. It is unrelated to Iran.