Clip From Video Game ARMA 3 Shared as Visual of Conflict Between Hamas & Israel

Several such video game clips have gone viral as real clips from the conflict between Hamas and Israel.

A video showing two helicopters being shot down from the evening sky has gone viral on social media as a real incident.

The claim: The video is being shared to claim that it shows two Israeli helicopters being shot down in Palestinian airspace by Hamas forces.

(Archives of more claims can be seen here and here.)

Is it true?: No. The video was first shared on the internet a few days before Hamas' surprise attack on Israel on 7 October and was created using a video game simulator called ARMA 3.

How did we find out?: In the comments under a claim on X (formerly Twitter), some users mentioned that the video was taken from ARMA 3.

• Taking a cue from this, we extracted keyframes from the viral videos using InVID WeVerify Google Chrome extension.

• We then used a Virtual Private Network (VPN) to conduct a reverse image search on some of the keyframes and added an advanced search for "arma helicopter shot down site:youtube.com"

• This led to a YouTube Short uploaded by a user KazinkkaWarrior, on 4 October, which predates the ongoing war.

• We compared the visuals from the YouTube Shorts with the viral video and found similarities.

The latest on the war:

The conflict between Israeli forces and Palestine's Hamas entered its third day with over 1,500 people losing their lives.

Israel has declared a "complete siege" of Gaza and said that the area is being cut off from water and power supplies.

Conclusion: A video from a video game called ARMA 3 has gone viral as a recent incident from the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine.

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