The Taliban captured Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital on August 15, 2021. Later, Pakistan extended its support to the Taliban victory.
In the backdrop of the incident, an image has gone viral on social media in which an aircraft is being carried in a truck. The image is being shared with a claim that an aircraft is being smuggled from Afghanistan to Pakistan in the truck.
The image is shared with the caption, “Billions of Dollars spend to build an army Thousands of lives lost to hold a country. This is the result after twenty years of war (Former Air Force plane trashed and smuggle to Pakistan).”
The link to the post can be seen here. Similar posts can be seen here and here.
FACT CHECK
NewsMobile did a fact check and found the claim to be false.
On doing a Google Reverse Image Search we found that the same image was uploaded on the website Homayundotorg on July 30, 2018. This established that the viral image is old.
Further, we ran a search using the number, ‘YA12303’, visible on the plane. The search led us to a website called Aviation Safety Net, where it was mentioned that the registration number was of the plane type Cessna 208B Grand Caravan.
Further description of the flight mentioned that the flight had met with an accident at Nili Airport, Daykundi Province, Afghanistan. The narrative read, “A Cessna 208B Grand Caravan operated by the Afghan Air Force sustained substantial damage in an accident at Nili Airport, Daykundi Province, Afghanistan. The aircraft had dropped off the new provincial governor at Nili and had just departed when a forced landing was carried out by the crew due to ‘technical reasons’. The aircraft came to rest off the airstrip. The nose landing gear had collapsed and the propeller was damaged.”
The website had an image of the flight in which one can see the same registration number as mentioned in the viral image.
We then ran another search and found a report by Tolo News about an army plane crash landing in Daikundi on October 3, 2017. The report read, “Soon after dropping off the new governor, the military plane took off but experienced technical problems and was forced to turn back.” While no casualties were reported, the plane was severely damaged.
Hence we can conclude that the viral image of a plane being transported in a truck is old and is unrelated to the Taliban capturing Afghanistan. Also, the plane crash-landed and hence was being transported in a truck. Thus the viral claim is fake.
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