Amid growing military tensions between India and China in the Ladakh region, a screenshot of a Facebook post is circulating on WhatsApp. The Facebook post contains three photos shared with a caption claiming that China has attacked India and injured 158 of our soldiers.
Two of these photos show military vehicles that caught fire, while the third photo shows some military personnel carrying wounded soldiers.
Times Fact Check also received this message as a forwarding from a reader on their WhatsApp number. The reader wanted to know its authenticity.
TRUE
The photos are old and have been shared with the same claim before.
VERIFICATION AND METHODOLOGY
We cropped and run a reverse image search on the three photos to trace their origin.
Image 1 and 2
We found a YouTube video uploaded to the ‘Talk Shows Central’ channel on July 17, 2017.
Titled ‘Chinese Cross Border Rocket Strike Kills 158 Indian Soldiers – Dunya News’, the video includes a news report from Pakistani news channel Dunya News to claim that in a China attack, India lost 158 soldiers. The video includes the first two photos shared in the previous claim.
The video was uploaded to YouTube during the Doklam clash between India and China. We searched many credible news sources and did not find any reports of 158 Indian soldiers killed by China during that period.
We also found a report from the Chinese Herald, New Zealand, which called this Dunya News report “fake news.”
Although it is clear that the first two images are at least three years old, we cannot say for sure when they were clicked.
Picture 3
The third and final photo dates back to a report published in Asian Lite International on July 19, 2017.
Entitled ‘Pakistani Resorts to Shelling at LoC; Two dead soldiers ‘, the report bears the same picture with a caption that reads’ Soldiers carry the body of a soldier who was killed in the Tarkundi area of the Rajouri district in a cross-border shooting at the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir ‘. The photo is credited to the IANS news agency.
Two Indian soldiers were reportedly killed when the Pakistani army resorted to heavy bombardment and shooting in various areas of the LoC.
Furthermore, no credible recent news reports were found claiming 158 Indian soldiers were injured following an attack from China.
VERDICT
Times Fact Check found that old images are circulating to falsely claim that China attacked 158 of our Indian soldiers and injured 158.
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