As Islamist-led rebels stormed into Damascus and Bashar al-Assad fled, some social media users claimed a video showed the deposed Syrian president’s plane being shot down and engulfed in flames. But the clip has nothing to do with December 2024 offensive; the plane pictured crashed in India months earlier after a technical problem forced the pilot to do so eject.
“AIRPLANE CRASH OF #Bashar_al_Assad NEAR #Homs ! IT LEFT #DAMASCUS AIRPORT, TAKE A TURN AND REACH A HEIGHT OF 500 METERS! THEN CRASHED! #Syrie #Syrian,” says a December 7, 2024 post on X.
Screenshot of X taken on December 9, 2024
Similar posts and some online articles shared the same seven-second clip of a fiery jet. It also spread into Polish.
The video came as crowds on the streets of Damascus cheered the dramatic end to more than five decades of Assad family rule in Syria. The government fell on December 8, days after rebels launched a surprise offensive – the latest in a long civil war that has killed 500,000 people after Assad cracked down on anti-government protests more than 13 years ago.
Russian news agencies said on December 8 that Assad and his family were in Moscow, although a day later the Kremlin refused to confirm that the deposed Syrian leader was in the country. The head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rightsa war monitor, told AFP that Assad left Syria through Damascus international airport.
The lack of official confirmation from the Syrian presidency has fueled online speculation about Assad’s whereabouts, with some flight attendants sharing data from Flightradar24 showing a plane from Damascus making a U-turn before losing signal.archived here and here). The flight The tracking service said on X that the aircraft was “old with an older transponder generation, so some data may be bad.”
Regardless of where Assad is, the video of a downed plane on fire does not show his plane – the clip is more than three months old and shows a crash in India.
A reverse image search revealed that the images date back to September 2, when media organizations such as India Today and the Indian Express published It (archived here, here and here). The clip also appears on the online video licensing website Newsflare (archived here).
According to reports, the plane was an Indian Air Force fighter that crashed in the town of Barmer during a training mission. The pilot ejected safely from the aircraft after a technical problem.
“During a routine night training mission in the Barmer sector, an IAF MiG-29 encountered a critical technical problem, forcing the pilot to eject,” the Indian Air Force posted on X at the time (archived here). loss of life or property was reported. A court of inquiry has been ordered.”
Other images show the crashed plane from other angles (archived here and here).
AFP has debunked other misinformation about Syria here.
