Fake News: Ethopian troops shown as Indian commandos training to fight Taliban

Hyderabad: Ever since the Taliban took over Kabul, fake news has flooded the internet in both the support of the militant group or against it.

A video showing soldiers failing to jump through a flaming hoop has been doing rounds on the internet claiming to be “Indian commandos” preparing to fight the Tailban.

The claim is however, false. The video first surfaced online since at least March 2020 in posts about a graduation ceremony for Ethiopian armed forces, according to AFP fact check.

The video was also shared on Facebook with similar claims.

https://www.facebook.com/plugins/video.php?height=315&href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2FSimpleBoyYoutuber%2Fvideos%2F507079327031030%2F&show_text=true&width=560

The original video was published on March 11, 2020, whose caption “a special commando from the Oromia special force caught on fire while showing his skill on his graduation day in Ethiopia.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjJ80fj36Q4

Further keyword searches by AFP fact check found an older video from March 9, 2020, which was claimed to be a video of a graduation ceremony posted by Ethiopian government broadcaster Oromia Broadcasting Network (OBN).

The caption of the video reads “Commando show on the 30th Oromia police graduation ceremony.”

A local media outlet Addis Standard tweeted about the same graduation ceremony on March 9,2020.