Posts from Indian users on social media platform X on April 30, 2025, shared a video, claiming it showed the Indian Army allegedly carrying out an attack in Sialkot. However, the footage is of Israel bombing Gaza in November 2023.
Al-Jazeera releases footage of Indian Army carrying out attack in Sialkot
The iVerify Pakistan team investigated this content and determined that it is false.
To reach this conclusion, iVerify Pakistan conducted a reverse image search to find the original source.
Posts from Indian users on social media platform X on April 30, 2025, shared a video, claiming it showed the Indian Army allegedly carrying out an attack in Sialkot. However, the footage is of Israel bombing Gaza in November 2023.
The April 22 attack in occupied Kashmir’s Pahalgam killed 26 people, mostly tourists, marking one of the deadliest assaults in the region since 2000. India has implied cross-border links without evidence, while Pakistan’s civilian and military leadership have rejected the accusation and called for a neutral probe.
On April 30, an X user based in India posted a 30-second clip featuring massive explosions and people fleeing.
The caption read: “Breaking news!! Al-Jazeera channel has released new footage of the Indian Army’s attack on Sialkot, Pakistan.”
The post was viewed 127,500 times.
The footage was also shared here, here, and here, racking up 167,000, 19,000, and 20,000 views.
Lower virality posts are archived here, here, here and here.
A fact-check was initiated to determine the veracity of the claim due to its virality and keen public interest in the tense situation between Pakistan and India post-Pahalgam.
Checking Al-Jazeera’s footage catalogue on social media channels, including YouTube, to determine whether the news outlet reported on any such development did not yield any such video.
Conducting a reverse image search on keyframes of the clip yielded a news report from Al-Jazeera dated November 11, 2023.
The header image of the report titled, “Israel is bombing hospitals in Gaza with Israeli doctors’ approval”, featured one of the screen grabs from the viral clip.
It was captioned: “Israeli bombardments targeted several hospitals in the northern Gaza Strip on November 10, 2023.”
A keyword search for “Al-Jazeera” and “Indonesian Hospital Gaza bombing” on YouTube led to a video report published by the media outlet on November 9, 2023. It featured the viral clip at the 5:05-minute mark.
The claim that a viral video shows an Al-Jazeera report on an Indian attack on Sialkot is false.
The video is from November 2023 and shows Israeli bombing in Gaza.
November 11, 2023, Al-Jazeera news report:
http://aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/11/11/israel-is-bombing-hospitals-in-gaza-with-israeli-doctors-approval
November 9, 2023, Al-Jazeera YouTube video:
https://youtu.be/TkUJkAq_m6k?si=uePvPHCcro5-R_Iv
