A video showing Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani boarding a plane has been shared by several social media users as the moment he fled the country on Sunday, 15 August, when the Taliban entered Kabul.
However, we found that the footage was from earlier in July when the president was on a two-day trip to the neighbouring Uzbekistan.
It is important to note that Ghani indeed left the country on Sunday when the Taliban fighters breached the capital city, Kabul. He later confirmed on Facebook that he left to "avoid bloodshed".
CLAIM
The video was shared with a caption that read, "Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan leaving the country".
Another user said that the president was on his way to Tajikistan. The verified Twitter handle of Tehran-based Tasnim News also shared the video.
In the video, Ghani can be seen waving to people while boarding the plane.
WHAT WE FOUND OUT
We fragmented the video into several keyframes using InVID WeVerify Google Chrome extension, and conducted a reverse image search on some of them.
While going through the search results, we came across the same video posted on the Twitter handle of the Afghan news outlet, TOLOnews.
The tweet, which was posted on 15 July, read, "President Ashraf Ghani left Kabul this morning for a two-day visit to Uzbekistan, the Presidential Palace said."
An official statement was also released by the Afghan government on the visit. The post titled "President Ghani Leaves Kabul for Uzbekistan", carried a screenshot from the video.
However, it is important to note that Ghani did leave the country when Taliban took over the capital city on Sunday. He later released a statement on Facebook and said, "The Taliban have made it to remove me; they are here to attack all Kabul and the people of Kabul. In order to avoid the bleeding flood, I thought it was best to get out."
While it is clear that Ghani has left the country, he has not released any information on his whereabouts. Al Jazeera, quoting sources, said that he had left for Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Some other media reports said that he had left for Tajikistan.
Evidently, an old video of President Ghani boarding a plane has been shared with a false claim that it showed footage of him leaving the country following Taliban's takeover of Kabul. As of Tuesday, 17 August, while this story was being written, no verified footage of Ghani's exit from the country was available.
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