Claim: A vehicle riddled with bullets is evidence of state authorities’ firing on the PTI protesters during the November 2024 demonstrations in Islamabad, according to a viral video.
Fact: The video has no connection to the PTI protest. It actually shows the aftermath of an attack by the militant group BLA on private security guards in Panjgur’s Parom area in October 2024.
On 28 November 2024, X (formerly Twitter) user @BabaG512 posted (archive) a video showing a man filming a black Toyota Hilux Surf, apparently riddled with bullet holes. The clip is accompanied by the following caption:
“جو لوگ کہتے ہیں 30 یا 40 لوگ شہید ہوئے ان کے لیے اس ایک گاڑی کو سیکڑوں گولیاں لگی ہیں ڈی چوک میں لاکھوں گولیاں چلائی گئی ہیں
[For those people who are saying that 30 or 40 people were martyred; just this one single car has been hit by hundreds of bullets. Millions of bullets were fired at D-Chowk.]”
The video was posted just two days following a protest by Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s (PTI) supporters in Islamabad that eventually dispersed after a crackdown by the security forces.
Khan’s imprisonment
Imran Khan, the PTI’s founder and former prime minister of Pakistan, has been incarcerated (archive) since 5 August 2023 over various charges, but he has either been acquitted or secured bail in some; the sentence for one charge has been suspended (archived here, here, here, here, and here, respectively).
Various international and local bodies have criticised the PTI founder’s continued detention. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) expressed concerns (archive) over jail conditions and Amnesty International said (archive) it “found several fair trial violations under international human rights standards”, terming his imprisonment “arbitrary detention”.
The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) has said (archive) that Khan’s detention is “arbitrary and in violation of international law”, according to a report (archive).
PTI protests in Islamabad
The PTI founder had issued a “final call” asking his supporters to gather for a protest on 24 November at Islamabad’s D-Chowk, a famous location for demonstrations. Party leaders and thousands of supporters from the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and Punjab provinces mobilised right away and moved towards the capital.
The PTI stated three demands: the release of all political prisoners, including Khan, reclaiming what they say was a “stolen mandate” from the 2024 general elections, and the reversal of a recent constitutional amendment.
On 26 November, Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi issued (archive) stern warnings against entering D-Chowk — which is part of the governmental area called the Red Zone — while police and law enforcement agencies (LEAs) deployed aggressive crowd control tactics. Pakistan Army troops were deployed (archive), especially as Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko was visiting to meet (archive) Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif at the time.
Internet blackouts were reported (archive) in the city and containers set up to block the protesters’ routes. Multiple other cities also experienced slow connectivity or disruptions to social media.
As tensions escalated, police fired (archive) rubber bullets and tear gas at protesters attempting to enter the area. According to reports, at least six people died (archive) during the confrontations. Some journalists also spoke (archive) of how apparent demonstrators attacked them and their offices. Soch Fact Check is unable to confirm the exact number of casualties and injuries at this time.
In a statement, Amnesty International urged authorities to “exercise maximum restraint” and highlighted “grave violation of the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly, movement and expression”. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) demanded the government and the PTI to “immediately enter a purposeful political dialogue” and avoid “bringing the country to a standstill” through such protests. It also denounced casualties, whether of protesters or law enforcement officials.
On 27 November, however, the PTI announced that the protest was “temporarily cancelled” in light of what it said was the “government’s brutality” and a “plan to turn the capital [Islamabad] into an execution chamber of unarmed civilians”. The development came hours after party leaders — including Bushra Bibi, Khan’s wife who was leading the demonstrations, and KP Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur — made a “frantic escape” in the night when authorities launched a raid to disperse the protesters.
The ‘lockdown’ in the federal capital was eventually lifted on 27 November. The Pakistani state-owned outlet PTV quoted Islamabad Inspector General Of Police (IGP) Syed Ali Nasir Rizvi as saying that at least 954 suspects were arrested, over 200 vehicles impounded, 39 weapons recovered, over 70 security personnel injured, and more than 165 safe city cameras damaged.
Khan then threatened a “nationwide civil disobedience movement” if two of his negotiation team’s demands were not met by the government, according to a 6 December post on his X account.
Casualty figures
The PTI has claimed that 12 of its workers were killed in what it has termed the “Islamabad Massacre”, according to a dossier compiled and distributed by the party. A 27 November report in The Express Tribune quoted medical sources as saying “six civilians” were among the deceased.
Multiple international media outlets, including BBC Urdu, The Guardian, and Al Jazeera, reported on the casualty figures, the state’s alleged move to suppress data from being released to the public, and health professionals who were reportedly barred from speaking to the media due to pressure.
The Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) — one of Islamabad’s two main public hospitals — refused to provide hospital records to the BBC, which quoted the families of those who were injured as saying the facility also denied providing patient files to them. The publication said it had information that the bodies of at least “two PTI workers were brought there”.
PIMS had earlier “confirmed the death of two civilians and injuries to around 60 persons, including security personnel”, according to a 27 November report by Dawn.
Similarly, Islamabad’s second public hospital, the Federal Government Poly Clinic (FGPC), also received the bodies of three people who were shot on 26 November, according to the BBC, which obtained the facility’s records. The publication added that a doctor claimed the police “prevented him from handing over the bodies to the heirs” and that two staffers alleged officers had stopped them “from performing post-mortems on the bodies”.
The BBC said it also observed that Rangers and police officers were guarding the hospital’s gates, wards, and emergency rooms at PIMS, while every individual was questioned before being allowed inside. The staff, it added, was monitoring everyone’s activities and several doctors revealed “they were under pressure from the police to hand over the injured”.
The Guardian visited hospitals in the capital city and noted that according to official sources, there were “17 civilian fatalities” from the authorities’ gunfire and “hundreds more had been injured”.
The publication reported on the alleged suppression by the state, quoting a doctor on emergency ward duty as saying “at least seven have died and four are in critical condition” and that authorities “confiscated” all records of the people who had died and those who were wounded. “We are not allowed to talk. Senior government officials are visiting the hospital to hide the records,” the medic told The Guardian, which added that families of those injured “were too scared to speak”.
Al Jazeera spoke to the families of four PTI workers who were reportedly killed and wrote about the alleged intimidation and harassment they faced by the authorities. The relatives spoke about how the bodies of the deceased were withheld to pressure them into not filing legal cases.
In another report published 1 December, Dawn quoted “a representative from the health authorities [as saying] that they had been barred from speaking on the issue as the interior ministry was dealing with it”. The publication also noted that unnamed doctors at both PIMS and FGPC also pointed out certain “anomalies” in the alleged death certificates of the PTI workers that were circulating on social media.
Journalists targeted
Meanwhile, journalists Matiullah Jan and Saqib Bashir were “abducted” from PIMS’ parking lot on 28 November, according to an X post by the former’s son — who said the unidentified “abductors [came] in an unmarked vehicle” — and multiple international media reports. The latter was let go three hours later. The move was condemned by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Amnesty International, and Reporters Without Borders (RSF).
The CPJ and media reports stated that the First Information Report (FIR) filed by the Islamabad Police against Jan included charges of terrorism, drug possession, and assaulting law enforcement officers — which his lawyer, Imaan Zainab Mazari-Hazir, said were “absurd”.
The human rights and press freedom groups noted that the detention came about after he reported on the PTI protests and disputed the government’s claims and data on the casualties. They also called for his immediate release and termed the charges trumped-up and politically-motivated.
Bashir said the two of them “were collecting data on the casualties” at PIMS before they were detained, according to Reuters, which also quoted Jan as saying he “was investigating about the (sic) dead bodies”.
Munizae Jahangir, a news anchor and the HRCP’s co-chairperson, said Jan “was reporting from hospitals on those injured & killed from bullet wounds at [the] PTI protest & [it] seems that’s why he has been arrested for his journalistic work”.
Jan was eventually released on 30 November, Mazari-Hazir confirmed on X.
Denials by gov’t, public hospitals
Both PIMS and the FGPC have now denied receiving any dead bodies and issued statements — here and here — terming the reports “fake”. These rebuttals were also referenced by Tarar, the information minister.
The PML-N government has refuted claims of gunshot-related deaths, according to a report, which said Tarar asserted that no demonstrator died due to law enforcement officers’ alleged shooting. He even denied that security personnel were carrying live ammunition on the day.
In other reports, the minister was quoted as saying that the “health department has issued two separate statements confirming this” and blaming “some medical professionals [who] have clearly shown their political affiliation”. He added, “I can definitely confirm that the medical superintendent, hospital in-charge, and the Health Ministry have issued written information about this and they have clearly denied it.”
In a 1 December statement, the Interior Ministry said the figure of fatalities was a “planned and coordinated massive fake propaganda” and those responsible for it “will surely be held accountable under relevant laws”. It added, “Alarmingly, certain elements of foreign media also fell prey to this fake news and propaganda without any credible evidence.”
The ministry also placed blame on the KP government, which is ruled by the PTI and which, it said, “primarily orchestrated and logistically & financially sustained and supported” the protests in Islamabad.
“Alarmingly, PTI’s protest included violent and trained miscreant elements including many illegal Afghan nationals who spearheaded the riots and violent activities throughout the march. These miscreants, employed as violent vanguard, comprised of approximately (sic) 1500 hard core fighters working directly under absconder and proclaimed offender Murad Saeed. […] It must be noted that LEAs personnel, despite sustaining grievous injuries, exhibited [a] high degree of restraint against these violent protesters led by trained miscreants,” the statement noted.
One police officer and three Rangers personnel were killed, the ministry said, adding that “232 LEAs personnel were also grievously injured by these miscreants”. It also accused KP CM Gandapur of making “baseless inflammatory statements”.
According to a report, the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) also issued a statement the same day, saying a campaign was “orchestrated to discredit State of Pakistan in general and security forces in particular” and that “multiple domestic and foreign-based media platforms are being used to perpetrate concocted, baseless and inciting news implicating the government of committing serious human rights violations”.
Meanwhile, Amnesty International issued a statement on the reports it received of multiple deaths and mass arrests of demonstrators, with its deputy regional director for South Asia, Babu Ram Pant, calling “for a prompt, thorough, impartial, effective and transparent investigation into the deaths and injuries of protesters as well as the unlawful use of force including lethal and less-lethal weapons by security personnel”.
Soch Fact Check has not yet independently verified the claims by either the PTI or the government and their tallies of casualties comprising party workers and security officials, respectively.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check first observed that the reflections in the black vehicle show a location very unlike Islamabad as it appears to be desolate and desert-like, without any structures.
We then reverse-searched keyframes from the viral video and came across this TikTok clip, posted on 19 November 2024, indicating that the footage predates the 26 November clashes.
We also found the video rehashed by other social media users. In these posts, many people had raised concerns in the comments about the clip not being from the PTI’s Islamabad protests. While some shared screenshots of the same TikTok clip from 19 November 2024, others said it was not authentic; a few wrote they believed the footage was from Balochistan.
Yet others shared a post highlighting that the video was actually from “from the Panjgur city of Balochistan when the terrorist organisation BLA [Baloch Liberation Army] brutally massacred innocent Baloch people and even accepted responsibility for it”. Two other accounts also shared the same information.
While all these posts contained a clip of the same vehicle, it was shot from a different angle and probably by a different individual. Soch Fact Check was able to trace the original TikTok video — posted on 29 October 2024 — and confirm that it is the same black Toyota Hilux Surf from the video in the claim by matching different objects and other elements.
Our reverse-image search also led to an X account named Factcheckly, which works on “debunking disinformation and propaganda in the era of infodemic”. It flagged the claim as false by providing two links to support its argument; these included a TikTok video posted on 29 October 2024 — that we were able to trace through another rehashed post on Facebook — and an article by The Balochistan Post published on the same date.
According to The Balochistan Post, five individuals were killed in the 29 October 2024 attack, for which the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), a proscribed ethnonationalist militant organisation claimed responsibility.
It wrote, “In a series of armed attacks in Balochistan, five individuals were killed in an attack by unidentified armed individuals in the Parom area of Panjgur district late last night. The attackers targeted security personnel stationed at an under-construction dam, leaving five dead and one injured. […] Reports indicate that the assailants seized weapons from the deceased and set construction machinery and two rooms ablaze.”
Using relevant keywords, we also came across two posts about the same incident by Bahot Baloch, a journalist from Balochistan who monitors Baloch armed groups.
Speaking to Soch Fact Check, Baloch confirmed that the vehicle seen in the viral video “was targeted by Baloch Liberation Army’s Fateh squad carried out in Panjgur last year [2024]” and that it “belonged to the death squad commander”. The journalist also shared their post from 22 November 2024 in which they reported on how the BLA used thermal scopes on their weapons to detect different objects’ heat signals.
“The BLA has released a video showing the use of advanced thermal scopes to target a ‘death squads’ camp, as well as a vehicle that arrived for help, in Panjgur late last month [October 2024]. The operation in Panjgur was carried out by the BLA’s special forces, the Fateh Squad, in which five members of the death squad were killed,” the journalist wrote.
Baloch also highlighted that the black Toyota Hilux Surf seen in the viral clip is the same as the one seen in the video released by the BLA.
“[The] operation was carried out at night using thermal [scope]. In the second part the vehicle can be seen,” Baloch told Soch Fact Check.
Multiple local media outlets also reported on the incident, while Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and President Asif Ali Zardari issued condemnations.
Virality
Soch Fact Check found that @BabaG512 shared the video twice on X, where their first — and primary — post was viewed over 15,900 times and the second one more than 25,100 times. It also appeared here, here, and here on the same platform.
On Facebook, the clip was posted here, here, here, and here.
We also noticed that Pakistani commentator Moeed Pirzada, the chief executive and editor of Global Village Space (GVS), reposted the viral video with the caption, “کچھ اور کہنے کی ضرورت نہیں ہے! [Nothing more needs to be said!]”. Soch Fact Check has debunked Pirzada’s claims at least four times in the past.
Conclusion: The video actually shows the aftermath of the militant group BLA’s attack on private security guards in Panjgur’s Parom area in October 2024. It has no connection to the PTI’s November protest.
Background image in cover photo: PTIOfficial
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