Old Clip of Drone in Power Lines Falsely Linked To Ongoing Iran-Israel Conflict

The video has been on the internet since February 2024 and predates Iran's recent retaliatory attack on Israel.

Visuals showing a drone tangled in electric power lines over an empty patch of land are being shared on social media, where users are linking in to Iran's retaliatory attacks against Israel on 13 April.

The claim: The video is being shared to claim that it shows an Iranian drone, which was targeted at Israel, stuck in power lines in Iraq.

• This comes nearly two weeks after an Israeli's airstrike destroyed Iran's embassy in Damascus, Syria on 1 April, killing 16 people, which included military personnel.

(Archives of more claims on social media can be seen here, here, and here.)

Is it true?: No, the video predates Iran's attacks against Israel.

• While we could not establish the location or the context of the video, we were able to trace the video back to February 2024, when it was shared as a video from Syria.

How did we find out?: We divided the video into multiple keyframes using InVID, a video verification extension on Google Chrome, and ran reverse image searches on some of them.

A result on Google led us to an X (formerly Twitter) post dated 21 February 2024, which carried stills from the viral video.

• It mentioned that it showed an "unidentified drone" which had crashed into electric cables in a town in Hasakah, Syria.

• On comparing one of these images to the viral video, we were able to establish that they showed the same incident.

• The same visuals were also shared in another post on X, which mentioned that a "suicide drone" had crashed into electrical lines in a village called Qamar Aldin, located in Hasakah, Syria.

• This post was also shared on 21 February, mentioning that the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) was intact and had not detonated, "making this a very dangerous item to remove."

⚪️Hasakah: A suicide drone crashed into electrical and communications lines in the village of Qamar Aldin near the town of Abu Khashb in northwestern Hasakah province. The UAV is completely intact with no detonation of the explosives making this a very dangerous item to remove.… pic.twitter.com/WPCAggJi3F

— Steele M (@SteeleSyAA) February 21, 2024

Conclusion: An old video of a drone caught in power lines is being shared on social media, where users have incorrectly linked it to the ongoing armed conflict between Iran and Israel.

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