A video showing an uniformed army personnel getting emotional while sitting inside a flight is going viral online to claim that it shows a Pakistani soldier crying because he was "forced to fight against India".
This claim comes following the Pahalgam terror attack and it goes on to mention that Pakistan's army chief, General Asim Munir, was the one who forced Pakistani soldiers to "go to war against India".
(Archives of similar claims can be seen here and here.)
What's the truth?: This video has been on the internet since September 2024 and is unrelated to the recent Pahalgam terror attack.
It shows a Pakistani peacekeeper, an army personnel associated with United Nations Peacekeeping Force, getting emotional during his first flight experience.
How did we find out the truth?: We observed the video carefully and noticed insignias of Pakistani army and United Nations Peacekeeping Force.
UN Peacekeeping Force is not involved in the recent Pahalgam terror attack and there are no credible reports linking the two.
We then checked UN Peacekeeping website which showed the same insignia.
Moving on, we performed a reverse image search on some of the keyframes of the viral clip on Google which led us to an Instagram post shared by an account 'Mian Mohammad Nawaz Sharif'.
This was shared on 8 March 2025 and the caption stated that it shows a Pakistani soldier sitting inside a plane for the first time.
The video was a longer version of the viral clip and it showed the officer smiling and feeling nervous about the flight turbulence.
This part was edited out from the viral video.
We then checked the replies on the viral claim and one of them mentioned that this video has been on the internet since 2024 and added a screenshot of the Facebook post.
Taking a cue, we looked for that Facebook post and found out that the longer version of this video was shared on 2 September 2024, predating the recent Pahalgam attack.
Conclusion: We could not independently verify more context behind the video however, it is clear that an old and unrelated video of a Pakistani soldier getting emotional is now being shared with a false claim.
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