No, This Video Doesn't Show Iranian President Raisi's Helicopter Crash

The video dates back to 2016 and has no connection to the Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi's helicopter crash.

A video of a helicopter going up in flames before crashing to the ground is being shared on social media.

The claim: Those sharing the video have claimed that it shows the "crash footage" of the helicopter which was carrying Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi.

• The aircraft, which was carrying Raisi and Iran's foreign minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, crashed in a mountainous region on Monday, 20 May, leaving no survivors.

Team WebQoof also received a query for this video's verification over email.

(An archived version of a YouTube video with the same claim can be seen here.)

But...?: The video has been on the internet since 2016 and reportedly shows Kurdish fighters targeting a Turkish Army helicopter.

• It has no connection to the Iranian president's demise.

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

• Supplementing Google's search with the keyword 'helicopter' led us to a page on Iranian media organisation Mashreg News's website, which carried a screenshot of the video in question.

• We found it in an article about Kurdish militia shooting down a Turkish army helicopter in the Hakkari province, published on 14 May 2016.

• Taking a cue from this, we looked for English-language reports about the incident.

• This showed us a report by The Washington Post, which carried a longer version of the video in its article.

We also found the video on Zee News' YouTube channel and a website called Military.com, both of which were published in May 2016.

While we could not independently verify the incident in the video, it is evident that the video is old and has no connection to Raisi's helicopter crashing.

Conclusion: A video of a helicopter being shot down by Kurdish fighters is being falsely linked to the death of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi.

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