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PeakMetrics / Fact Checks

War & conflict fact checks

Explore claims publishers have checked about war & conflict. Read their original ratings and follow the evidence.

5,847 published reviews in this topic

FACTLYWar & conflict

The ‘BBC’ news telecast video reporting the communal violence in Tripura

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim concerns a video shared as a BBC news telecast showing the recent communal violence in Tripura. The review says the footage instead came from BBC reporting on the 2020 Delhi riots, showing Delhi police lathi-charging anti-CAA protestors. It therefore distinguishes the event shown in the video from the event the post said it depicted. (S1) The review describes two checks on the footage. It reports that listening from 2:26 in the video reveals the BBC journalist saying the incident took place in Delhi and discussing allegations of police lathi-charging protestors. It also notes that the police-station building visible in the footage bears the words “थाना खजुरी खास”; the review identifies Khajoori Khas as a neighbourhood in north-eastern Delhi. (S1) The review also says a reverse image search of screenshots found a BBC tweet dated 03 March 2020 with similar visuals, identified as an investigation into Delhi police lathi-charging anti-CAA protestors in Delhi. It further points to a BBC article published on 04 March 2020 sharing similar visuals of the incident. Although the review notes that BBC also reported on Tripura’s communal violence, it says the video in the post was related to the 2020 Delhi riots, not Tripura. (S1)

FACTLYWar & conflict

Images of recent communal violence in Tripura

Publisher’s rating: MISLEADING

FACTLY examined a group of images circulated as showing recent communal violence in Tripura. Its conclusion was qualified: it acknowledged reports of recent violence, but found that the viral images did not all depict those incidents. Most were unrelated to the recent violence; two were connected to earlier clashes between BJP and CPM activists in Agartala in September 2021. The review describes reverse image searches and comparisons with published news photographs. It traced one image to Indian Express coverage of the September 2021 Agartala clashes, and another to Times of India reporting about those same clashes. The remaining images had different origins: a 2018 Ram Navami procession in Jadavpur, Kolkata; protests in Panisagar following a 2020 rehabilitation decision involving Bru tribals; and CAA-related protests in Delhi in 2020 and Assam in 2019. The review cites matching news reports and, for some images, the photographs’ captions, credits or Getty Images descriptions. The article also discusses separate images and videos claiming a mosque had been set on fire in Panisagar. It says FACTLY could not identify the authentic source of those visuals, and reports that Tripura Police said no such mosque incident had occurred and shared photographs of a mosque in good condition. This qualification concerns the separate mosque-fire claim; the review’s conclusion about the group of viral images is that they were old or unrelated to the recent communal violence.

dpaWar & conflict

Fotos zeigen Panzer im Hamburger Hafen am 11. Oktober.

Publisher’s rating: Die Behauptung ist falsch. Die verwendeten Fotos sind weder in Hamburg noch zum behaupteten Zeitpunkt entstanden.

The claim concerned photos presented as evidence of military movements in Hamburg on 11 October. The review says they appeared in a Facebook post circulated from Luxembourg on 20 October 2021, with the caption “Hamburg am 11. Oktober und die Medien schweigen” (“Hamburg on 11 October and the media are silent”). The review identifies the images as a collage bearing a reference to the “17. Stammtisch” Telegram channel. The investigation traced the pictures to a different place and time: the port of Antwerp in November 2020, not Hamburg in October 2021. It reports that the images showed US military vehicles unloaded and lined up there, and that they had appeared in Belgian newspapers on 16 November 2020. This directly contradicts the post’s claim about where and when the pictured vehicles were in port. The review places the images in the context of the US military’s “Atlantic Resolve” deployment. It cites a US military press release dated 20 November 2020 describing the movement of units, including the October 2020 transport of a brigade from Fort Hood, Texas. The review says the vehicles were intended mainly for deployment in Eastern European countries; it therefore distinguishes the real 2020 movement from the post’s unsupported assertion of a 2021 arrival in Hamburg.

FACTLYWar & conflict

Images showing Indian forces’ crackdown on Kashmiris

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The post attributed three images—a burning building, shrouded bodies laid on the ground, and men beating a man—to Indian forces’ crackdown on Kashmiris. FACTLY’s review traced the images to different events and places, rather than treating them as evidence of one crackdown in Kashmir. It reports that one image relates to a shrine fire in Srinagar in 2012, while the other two relate to protests over India’s Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) in 2020. For the building image, the review says reverse-image searching led to a 2012 news article that published the same photograph and identified the location as the Dastageer Sahib Shrine in Jammu and Kashmir. FACTLY also says the photograph appeared in the PTI archive, with a caption describing a fire at the shrine in Srinagar. The review attributes the fire to a short circuit, citing another news article; it does not present the photograph as evidence of a military crackdown. The review identifies the image of men beating a man as a scene from anti-CAA protests in Delhi on February 24, 2020, and says the image of shrouded bodies was circulating in connection with anti-CAA protests in Aurangabad. It also notes that a placard in the latter image bears the words “CAA” and “NRC.” Thus, the images’ reported provenance points to a shrine fire and CAA-related protests, not the claimed crackdown on Kashmiris.

FACTLYWar & conflict

Video that shows 40,000 US soldiers resigning and throwing away their medals after they fought in Afghanistan and Iraq

Publisher’s rating: MISLEADING

The post’s claim is that a video shows 40,000 US soldiers resigning and throwing away their medals after fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. FACTLY reports that the footage instead depicts an anti-NATO rally in Chicago in 2012, where nearly 50 US veterans discarded medals in protest of the wars. The review distinguishes this protest by veterans from the claimed mass resignation by soldiers. To investigate the video, FACTLY says it performed a reverse image search on screenshots and found a YouTube video published by Democracy Now on 21 May 2012. The video’s title identifies veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan returning their war medals at a NATO summit. According to FACTLY’s account of that report, nearly 50 veterans threw their medals toward the summit, which was being held in Chicago. The review further reports that no recent news reports described 40,000 soldiers resigning after the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Its conclusion is that the footage shows a real protest, but the post misrepresents both the number involved and what the participants were doing: the documented event involved nearly 50 veterans rejecting the wars, not 40,000 soldiers resigning.

FACTLYWar & conflict

Video showing Indian military crackdown on Kashmiris

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim concerned a video of people being beaten by uniformed men, presented as showing an Indian military crackdown on Kashmiris. The post also claimed that the Indian government had announced military action in Kashmir and that internet and communications had been cut off there. The investigation identified the footage as police action during anti-CAA protests at Nakhas Chowk in Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh, in December 2019—not a crackdown in Kashmir. To identify the footage, the review traced a longer, higher-resolution version shared on Facebook in January 2020. Its description attributed the scene to police lathi-charge at CAA protests in Uttar Pradesh. The review then found a YouTube video with similar visuals, dated to December 2019, and a 2019 news video of police lathi-charge at the Gorakhpur protests. That news report said police acted against protesters who had pelted stones at them. The review compared visuals from the news report with the Facebook version and reported similarities, concluding that the viral footage came from the Gorakhpur protests. It also cautioned that a separate segment in which an older man speaks could not be independently located or contextualized. That qualification does not change the identification of the lathi-charge footage, but the excerpt does not establish the setting or circumstances of the speech.