DigitEye India Fact Checkers
Social media is abuzz with visuals purportedly showing a drone entangled in electric power lines above a desolate area, with claims that Iran’s retaliatory actions against Israel on April 13 could not even send a drone perfectly.
An Iranian drone became entangled in power lines in Iraq.
🤣🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/XFAWKfUOmD
— All Lives Matter ( ALM ) (@All18893087) April 14, 2024
This context of the claim came nearly two weeks following an Israeli airstrike on April 1, which decimated Iran’s embassy in Damascus, Syria, resulting in 16 casualties, including military personnel. When news reports emerged about retaliation by Iran in the form of sending drones and missiles to attack Israel, the video of a drone captured the attention of many.
The video is being shared here and here.
FACT CHECK
To authenticate the origin of the video, we employed InVID, a video verification tool integrated with Google Chrome, segmenting the video into distinct keyframes and conducting reverse image searches on several of them.
Our search led us to a post on X (formerly Twitter), dated February 21, 2024, featuring stills from the viral video. This enabled us to trace the video back to February 2024, when it circulated as footage originating from Syria.
Syria: photo of the day. An unidentified drone stuck in electric wires in Hasakah province. pic.twitter.com/U7borPzbFm
— QalaatM (@QalaatM) February 20, 2024
Upon comparison with the viral video, we confirmed that both images depicted the same event, evident from consistent features such as surrounding buildings and a distinctive white mark on the drone.
Furthermore, a separate post on X, also from February 21, recounted a similar occurrence where a “suicide drone” crashed into electrical lines in Qamar Aldin village, located in Syria’s Hasakah region. This post highlighted the intact nature of the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), emphasizing the risk associated with its removal.
Since, the video has been in circulation since February 2024 indicating that the incident is about an “unidentified drone” crashing into power cables in a town within Syria’s Hasakah region, it clearly took place before the Iran’s drone attack on Israel on April 14, 2024. Hence, the claim is false.
Claim: An Iranian drone entangled in power lines in Iraq on April 14, 2024 when it launched aerial attack on Israel.
Conclusion: The claim is false. The circulated video of a drone entangled in power lines dates back to February 2024 and has no association with the recent hostilities between Iran and Israel.
Rating: Misrepresentation — 
