Fact Check: India restored Afghan MiG-29 crashes during its first flight? No, here are the facts
An image has been circulating online, claiming it shows an Afghan aircraft restored by Indian engineers that crashed during its first flight in Kandahar.
By - Md Mahfooz Alam
Claim:The image shows an Afghan aircraft restored by Indian engineers that crashed during its first flight in Kandahar.
Fact:False. The image shows an Iraqi aircraft destroyed during Operation Desert Storm in 1991.
Recently, Pakistan and Afghanistan engaged in a severe confrontation. Deadly clashes erupted after Pakistani airstrikes on Kabul reportedly targeted Pakistani Taliban (TTP) leaders. The conflict escalated after Afghan Taliban forces launched retaliatory attacks on Pakistani border posts on the night of October 11-12, with both sides claiming significant casualties.
Meanwhile, in what appears to be an indirect jibe at the growing ties between India and Afghanistan, propagandist Pakistani X accounts have been circulating an image of a destroyed aircraft. The users claim that an Afghan MiG-29, allegedly restored by Indian engineers, crashed during its first flight in Kandahar.
Sharing the image, an X account, PakUrdu captioned it, “An Afghan MiG-29 restored with the help of Indian engineers crashes during its first flight in Kandahar, reports say the team has ‘flown’ to Nepal now!” (Archive)
Fact Check
NewsMeter found the claim to be false, as the image shows an Iraqi aircraft following Operation Desert Storm in 1991.
A reverse image search led us to two images, including the viral one posted by military historian Mike Guardia on April 29. Guardia stated that the images depict the charred remains of an Iraqi MiG-29 following Operation Desert Storm in 1991.
He mentioned in his post that the Iraqi Air Force received its first MiG-29s in 1987, toward the end of the Iran-Iraq War, but most of these MiGs were destroyed during Desert Storm.
We also found the image on the stock website Alamy, where it is described as depicting an Iraqi MiG-29 aircraft lying in ruins after being destroyed by Allied forces during Operation Desert Storm.
According to the image description on the website, the photograph was taken on March 2, 1991.
However, another stock website—Getty Images, which published a close-up of this image in October 2016 with a creation date of January 1, 1991, identified it as an Iraqi MiG-25 aircraft lying in ruins after being destroyed by Allied forces during Operation Desert Storm. The website Global Security also described the destroyed jet as a MiG-25 following Operation Desert Storm.
An article by the Wilson Centre, a nonpartisan think tank based in Washington, D.C., featured the image of the destroyed aircraft in a piece published on January 14, 2021, marking the 30th anniversary of Operation Desert Storm.
According to the article, Operation Desert Storm began in January 1991 when a US-led coalition launched major air and naval attacks against Iraq following its invasion of Kuwait. The article identifies the image, sourced from Wikimedia, as the wreckage of a MiG-29, photographed on March 2, 1991.
NewsMeter could not independently verify the specific model of the destroyed aircraft in the viral image. However, our findings confirm that the image shows an Iraqi aircraft destroyed during Operation Desert Storm in 1991.
Hence, the claim that the image shows an Afghan aircraft restored by Indian engineers that later crashed is false.
