FACT CHECK: Video from Russia's Artillery Day falsely shared as Iranians watching Azerbaijan-Armenia conflict live.

Hyderabad: In light of the recent conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia, many videos went viral claiming to show the situation at the border. One such video was of a group of people watching the sky as shots were being fired into the sky from one end to the other. Neitzens claimed that the people in the video are Iranians having fun watching artillery fire between Azerbaijan and Armenia.

A twitter user posted this video and it notched over 300 retweets. It read, "Iranians stood on the top of the mountain and watched the war between Azerbaijan and Armenia launching rockets at each other as if watching some cracker show. Both countries have borders with Iran."

Click here to view the archive and here to view a similar claim on Facebook.

FACT CHECK:

The claim is false.

Newsmeter performed a reverse image search and found a YouTube video with the title 'BM-21 GRAD (БМ-21 "Град") – Rapid Fire' from November 27, 2019. The datestamp proves that the video is a year old and is not related to the recent conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia.

Secondly, a tweet from the verified account of a Russian media channel, NTV, upon translation, read, "If you didn't know what Russian fireworks look like, then take a look. The footage was filmed at the range among multiple launch rocket systems. Judging by the calmness of the audience, they see this at least every day."

Apart from this, there was also a screenshot on the Chinese website, QQ, along with a caption in Chinese stating that the video is from Rocket Forces and Artillery Day held in Russia each year. Russia's Rocket Forces and Artillery Day is a holiday celebrated in Russia and Belarus on 19 November every year and it is celebrated with a display of fireworks.

The video is taken from an event that took place on the Rocket Forces and Artillery Day and hence the claim is false.