A video of a blast taking place in a crowded lane has gone viral on the internet, where users are claiming that it shows an explosion that killed terror group Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar in Bhawalpur, Pakistan.
Who shared it?: The claim originated on X (formerly Twitter), where users shared the clip claiming that multiple explosions took place in Pakistan on New Year's Day, killing Azhar.
Picking up on the claim's virality, news organisations such as The Free Press Journal, Zee News and The Economic Times also shared the claim and visuals.
An archived version of this post can be seen here.
(Source: X/Screenshot)
(Archives of more posts sharing the same claim can be seen here, here, and here.)
Is it true?: While reports of Azhar's death are unconfirmed, the video is not a recent one.
It dates back to 3 November 2023, when an explosion took place in Dera Ismail Khan's Tank Adda in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa region.
How did we find out?: Using InVID, a video verification tool, we ran divided the viral video into multiple keyframes and ran reverse image searches on some of them.
The video was shared in November 2023.
(Source: X/Altered by The Quint)
Pakistani politician Ali Wazir also shared the video with the same information, along with other visuals of him meeting the injured people.
Media reports: The bomb was hidden in a motorcycle, which was parked near a police vehicle and was detonated remotely, as per a report by Associated Press.
An exchange of fire took place between security forces and the attackers after the blast, which targeted the army and the police, reported The Express Tribune.
A video by ARY News mentioned that the explosion took place at Tank Adda in Dera Ismail Khan, followed by firing. All injured were taken to the district hospital and the area was cordoned off after the blast, it added.
Geolocating the video: While looking for more information, we came across a live video on a Facebook page, which showed a man reporting from the blast site.
He mentioned that the Tank Adda area, which is very crowded, had been cordoned off shortly after the blast, mentioning the kind of shops around the area.
One of the shops was called Sultan Medical Hall, he said, showing visuals of the shop's board. We translated the board using Google lens, which showed a similar name for the shop.
This board is visible at the 5:29 mark in the live video.
(Source: Facebook/Google Lens/Screenshot)
Using Google Maps, we looked for the distance between the blast site and Sultan Medical Hall and found that the two spots were 62 metres away from each other.
The two places are very close to each other.
(Source: Google Maps/Screenshot)
Blasts in Pakistan on New Years Day?: We looked for news reports about recent explosions in Pakistan.
This led us to several news reports about a blast in Balochistan's Bolan district on 31 December 2023, where a roadside bomb killed two minors.
However, they did not mention Bahawalpur, where Masood Azhar was claimed to have been killed, or Azhar's name.
We also found that Bolan and Bahawalpur were very far from each other, as Bolan is in the country's Balochistan area, while Bahawalpur is in Pakistan's Punjab.
Balochistan and Bahawalpur are at least 900 kilometres away from each other.
(Source: Google Maps/Screenshot)
The Quint reached out to Naveed Akbar, a Pakistani journalist, who confirmed that the video was old.
"There is no such blast in the last few days. This video is an old one. There was a firing incident on a politician Maulana Fazal-ur Rehman in Dera Ismail Khan, but it was on his motorcade and he was not in the car," Akbar told us, adding that the DI Khan was Rehman's hometown.
Masood Azhar's death: There are no announcements, reports, or posts from any official and credible sources in India or Pakistan which confirm Azhar's deaths.
Conclusion: The video shows a blast which took place on 3 November 2023 in Pakistan's Dera Ismail Khan area. There are no credible sources confirming Azhar's death.
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