Authors
Kushel HM is a mechanical engineer-turned-journalist, who loves all things football, tennis and films. He was with the news desk at the Hindustan Times, Mumbai, before joining Newschecker.
Ruby leads editorial, operations and initiatives at Newschecker. In her former avatar at New Delhi Television (NDTV), India’s leading national news network, she was a news anchor, supervising producer and senior output editor. Her over a decade-long career encompasses ground-breaking reportage from conflict zones and reporting on terror incidents, election campaigns, and gender issues. Ruby is an Emmy-nominated producer and has handled both local and international assignments, including the coverage of Arab Spring in 2011, the US Presidential elections in 2016, and ground reportage on the Kashmir issue since 2009.
Claim
Videos show Hamas fighters shooting down Israel’s helicopters in Gaza, Palestine.
Video 1
Video 2
UPDATE ON 16/10/2023: Several social media users circulated a video, claiming that a helicopter was shot down during the conflict.
Video 3
The archived versions of the tweets can be seen here and here.
Israel-Palestine Conflict Escalates
More than 300 were killed in Israel and several others abducted in a surprise large-scale attack by the Palestinian group Hamas, marking the deadliest day of violence in Israel since the Yom Kippur war half a century ago. Israel launched devastating retaliatory strikes, resulting in over 230 casualties in Gaza.
Fact
We first ran a keyword search for “Hamas helicopter strike Israel”, which did not throw up any credible news reports.
Subsequently, a reverse image search of keyframes of the viral videos, which seemed like CGI, led us to two Youtube videos, uploaded by gaming channels on February 27, 2023, and March 13, 2022 (similar gameplay), respectively. The descriptions state that the clips are from a military simulation video game, Arma 3.
We learnt that Arma 3 is a realism-based military tactical shooter video game developed by Bohemia Interactive, confirming that the viral clips are video game footage.
UPDATE: We came across this Youtube video, dated October 4, 2023, further confirming that the second video, too, is footage from Arma 3.
UPDATE ON 16/10/2023: A reverse image search of keyframes of the third video led us to this Youtube short, dated September 27, 2023, stating that the viral clip, too, shows footage from the military simulation video, Arma 3.
Result: False
Sources
Youtube video, February 27, 2023
Youtube video, March 13, 2022
Youtube video, September 27, 2023
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Authors
Kushel HM is a mechanical engineer-turned-journalist, who loves all things football, tennis and films. He was with the news desk at the Hindustan Times, Mumbai, before joining Newschecker.
Ruby leads editorial, operations and initiatives at Newschecker. In her former avatar at New Delhi Television (NDTV), India’s leading national news network, she was a news anchor, supervising producer and senior output editor. Her over a decade-long career encompasses ground-breaking reportage from conflict zones and reporting on terror incidents, election campaigns, and gender issues. Ruby is an Emmy-nominated producer and has handled both local and international assignments, including the coverage of Arab Spring in 2011, the US Presidential elections in 2016, and ground reportage on the Kashmir issue since 2009.
