Sanjeeb Phuyal is the Nepali Editor of Newschecker based in Kathmandu, Nepal. He brings over a decade of experience writing and editing news. In his previous stint, he worked as online editor for The Kathmandu Post. With the growth of social media platforms—and the ever-growing competition amongst media outlets to churn out breaking news, he feels that fact-checking every piece of information has become more essential today than ever before.
Claim
Nepal sent fighter planes to Israel as military assistance.
Fact
Viral video allegedly showing planes over Kathmandu Airport is edited.
Even as Israel continues its offensive in Gaza following a bloody surprise attack by Hamas on October 7, a video claiming that Nepal has donated fighter planes to Israel as a military support to Israel is going viral on TikTok.
TikTok user @bhanu1789 posted a video allegedly showing numerous fighter planes flying over Nepal’s Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu. Text superimposed on the video reads, “Salute to Nepal government. Nepal government has sent fighter planes as assistance to Israel.” An audio of a female voice loudly saying “Nepal ” is heard in the background. The video caption reads, “Hopefully, one day we all Nepali people will become capable to extend an assistance like this.”
The video posted on October 11 has garnered 34.7k likes, 492 users have shared it and 2047 people have commented on it until the time of publishing this article.
The archive version of the TikTok video can be seen here.
Newschecker found the claim to be misleading.
Fact Check /Verification
To check the authenticity of the claim made in the viral video, Newschecker looked up news reports on Nepal’s decision to send military aid to Nepal. However, we didn’t find any reports regarding the Nepal government sending any military aid to Israel.
We found several media reports confirming that a wide-body aircraft of Nepal Airlines was sent to Israel to bring the Nepali people stranded in Israel after the Israel-Hamas conflict escalated. On checking a news article, dated October 13, published in the Himalayan Times online, we found that 254 Nepali people rescued from Israel were brought home on Friday.
We, then, took several keyframes from the viral video showing the fighter planes and conducted reverse searches on them. The results pointed us towards military airshows the likes of which had never happened in Nepal.
Further, a reverse search on one of the aircrafts seen flying in the sky led us to an image of US Air Force Boeing C-17A Globemaster III whose shapes and logo matched the keyframe from the viral video. We compared the image of aircraft shown in the keyframe and an image of US Air Force Boeing C-17A and found many similarities.
This indicated that the video showed a US military Airshow. However, we couldn’t find the original footage of fighter planes used in the viral video.
Then, we noticed the CapCut template written on the bottom of the video, thus indicating that the video was actually created by using the CapCut video editing feature, which has been the latest viral sensation on TikTok.
Conclusion
No, Nepal has not sent or donated any fighter planes to Israel after the outbreak of violence in the Israel-Palestine conflict. The viral video allegedly showing fighter planes flying over Kathmandu Airport is actually edited by using CapCut feature.
Result: False
Sources
The Himalayan Times, October 13, 2023
My Republic, October 13, 2023
Jet Photos January 4, 2008
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Sanjeeb Phuyal is the Nepali Editor of Newschecker based in Kathmandu, Nepal. He brings over a decade of experience writing and editing news. In his previous stint, he worked as online editor for The Kathmandu Post. With the growth of social media platforms—and the ever-growing competition amongst media outlets to churn out breaking news, he feels that fact-checking every piece of information has become more essential today than ever before.
