Fact Check: Car blast at Chinese eatery in Kabul’s Shahr-e-Naw caught on tape? No, the video is old
A video is circulating online with the claim that it shows the car blast at Kabul’s Shahr-e-Naw on January 19.
By - K Sherly Sharon
Claim:The video shows the January 19 blast at a Chinese restaurant in Shahr-e-Naw of Kabul.
Fact:The claim is false. The video has been circulating on the internet since at least February 25, 2015.
Hyderabad: A video of a car explosion is going viral on social media with the claim that it shows a blast in Kabul’s Shahr-e-Naw area in Afghanistan.
On January 19, a blast at a Chinese restaurant in Shahr-e-Naw led to the death of six locals and one Chinese individual.
The viral clips in the video show a car with sirens mounted on top of it, pulling out onto a road. Immediately, a blast occurred, tearing the car apart. Then a slowed version of the same car blast follows. After a few seconds into the video, we see the Pashto text, “Explosions occurred on the Kabul Line in Gardez city, killing two soldiers and seriously wounding one.”
Sharing the video on social media, a user wrote, “BREAKING: Massive IED Blast in Front of ‘Chinese Restaurant’ in Kabul. Sources told Afghan Times that on Monday, January 19, a powerful explosion occurred near a Chinese restaurant in the Shahr-e-Naw area of Kabul. The blast reportedly targeted a vehicle carrying Chinese officials and was allegedly carried out by rival factions within the Taliban. Taliban officials have not yet commented on the incident or confirmed any casualties.” (Archive)
A post making a similar claim can be found here. (Archive)
Fact Check
NewsMeter found that the viral claim is false. The video has been circulating on the internet since at least 2015.
Using keyframe searches, we found the extended version of the viral video featuring other blasts, uploaded to Facebook. This 5-minute-long extended video also contains the slowed-down version of the blasts.
The video was published on September 16, 2020, with the Pashto caption, “Taliban suicide and bombing attacks, recorded and published by themselves."
Using this lead, we found that the viral video was also shared on Facebook in September 2020, here and here.
On the X post sharing the viral car blast video on January 20, we found a comment by a user ‘Ammar_yasir1415’ who shared two screenshots of the viral video on the Internet Archive website.
Sharing the screenshots, the user wrote that the viral video clip is from the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA), in which IEA carried out a powerful blast by police officers in the Gardez District of Paktia Province, and then the Alhijra studio later released this scene in the full documentary named ‘Ibrat 2’.
We found the document series that the user referred to in their comments on the Internet Archive website.
It is a 54-minute-long video that shows several video clips of blasts. The viral video clip of a car blast can be seen from the 15:13 minute mark to the 16:26 minute mark.
At the beginning of the video, we can see that it has been published by the ‘Cultural Affairs Commission’, ‘Audiovisual Department’. It contains the logo of ‘Al-Hijrat’.
At the very end of the video, the text appears “I once again call upon all Afghans who are serving in the enemy ranks to turn the muzzles of their guns on the infidel invaders and their allies instead of martyring their fellow Afghan Muslims.”
However, the video does not include any time stamps or location details regarding the blasts it features. The video itself was uploaded to Internet Archive on February 25, 2015, by a user ‘al_hijrat’.
It is clear that the viral video has been circulating online at least since February 25, 2015.
Although we were unable to independently verify the location and time of the blast from the viral video, based on the evidence we gathered, NewsMeter concludes that the viral claim is false. The viral video is old.
