Fact check: Footage 'showing' Iran’s top general's killing taken from a video game
Social media users claim, the video shared shows Soleimani's killing 'in Iran' is from a 2015 video game preview. PHOTO: AFP
The video was shared in this Facebook post on January 6, 2020. The one-minute and 40-second long clip appears to show military thermal imagery of a missile strike on a convoy.
"80 American terrorists killed in Iran missile strikes"
The post’s caption reads: “American drone attack on Soleimani in Iran.”
Below is a screenshot of the misleading post:
The video has also been shared repeatedly on Facebook, for example here, here, here and here and on Twitter here and here.
But the claim is false; a reverse image search using key frames from the video found that the footage is actually from a military simulation video game called AC-130 Gunship Simulator: Special Ops Squadron.
The footage was posted on YouTube here on May 25, 2015, on a video gaming channel Byte Conveyor Studios with a title: ‘AC-130 Gunship Simulator- Convoy Engagement’.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clL9yZSbcE0&feature=emb_title
The caption of the YouTube video, which has over 5.8 million views, reads: “Development preview of our upcoming game for mobile platforms, ‘AC-130 Gunship Simulator: Special Ops Squadron’. Voted TOP 50 2014 App of the Year at SlideDB.”
Below are screenshot comparisons from the misleading video (L) and the video game footage from YouTube (R):
Another longer version of the video game footage was published on YouTube here on May 13, 2015.
Soleimani was killed by a US drone strike in Baghdad, Iraq, not in Iran as the misleading Facebook post claims. AFP’s report on the attack can be seen here.