Old Video Game Footage Shared as US Strike That Killed Soleimani

A video game footage is being shared online as the US airstrike that killed Iranian military commander Soleimani.

A video game footage is being shared on social media as the US airstrike that killed Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani.

(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

CLAIM

Tension between theUnited States and Iran have escalated over the past week after Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani was killed in a US airstrike in Baghdad. Following this, a video is being massively circulated on social media with the claims that it’s the drone footage of the US strike that killed Soleimani.

We received a query regarding the video on our WhatsApp helpline number.

(Source: WhatsApp/Screenshot)

The video is also being massively shared on Facebook with a similar claim.

An archived version of the video can be found here. (Source: Facebook)

TRUE OR FALSE?

The Quint could verify that the claim is absolutely false as the video does not show the US airstrike in Baghdad. In fact, it has been taken from a trial version of a video game.

WHAT WE FOUND

On conducting a reverse image search using the Yandex search engine, we were directed to the website of Mod DB, which is a video game modification community. From there we learnt that the video has been taken from a 2015 video game called AC 130 Simulator.

(Source: Mod DB/Screenshot)

We followed this with a keyword search using ‘AC 130 Simulator’ and found the original video on the YouTube channel of a video game developing company called Byte Conveyor Studios.

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