Claim: Video shows the Pakistan Army opening fire at the Afghan Taliban.
Fact: The video is at least a decade old and is likely from Yemen. It is entirely unrelated to the recent cross-border tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
On 20 February, an X user posted a video (archive) purportedly showing the Pakistani army attacking soldiers of the Afghan Taliban in a recent episode of cross-border firing.
According to the accompanying caption: “Pakistan Army Wreaks Hav[o]c on Taliban After Afghan Unprovoked Fire. Yesterday’s footage shows the Pakistan Army relentlessly pounding Taliban positions after their unprovoked aggression. At least 30 Taliban militants were killed. Situation is now calm in Shamsi & Zakhakhel.”
On 18 February, Pakistan’s security forces conducted a military operation that killed 30 militants in South Waziristan, near the Afghan border.
While the caption likely refers to the aforementioned operation, the video is unrelated to the attack. This article is not fact-checking the claims made in the caption.
Tensions at the Pak-Afghan Border
Cross-border skirmishes have risen between Pakistan and Afghanistan since the Taliban returned to power in 2021 with the withdrawal of the US-led international forces.
In August 2021, cross-border fire from Afghanistan killed two Pakistani soldiers, and a retaliatory attack from the Pakistani side killed “two or three attackers.”
In early 2022, another instance of firing from Afghanistan at a border post killed five Pakistani soldiers, according to Al Jazeera. These attacks began after the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the militant group based mostly in the bordering country, ended a month-long ceasefire agreement with Pakistan in December 2021.
In December 2024, a Frontier Constabulary (FC) soldier was killed and 11 others were injured in another incident of firing from the neighbouring country on Pakistani border posts. This occurred after Pakistani fighter jets bombed TTP camps inside Afghanistan.
Soch Fact Check also found reports that indicated clashes between Pakistani security forces and militants took place in February 2025. On 17 February, militants attacked a “convoy of trucks carrying food, medicine and other supplies for thousands of residents trapped by sectarian violence” in Kurram District, which borders eastern Afghanistan. According to the Associated Press (AP), local authorities began an operation against the militants who burned the trucks.
Most recently, Pakistani security forces conducted an operation against militants on 21 February in Karak district, located in the northwest of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, bordering Afghanistan. “The military provided no further details about the killed militants, but such operations are often conducted against the Pakistani Taliban, which are also known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP,” according to AP.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check reverse-searched keyframes from the video and found that it is not connected to Pakistan or Afghanistan.
A Yandex search led us to a YouTube video (archive) from May 2019, titled “Violent face-to-face confrontations with Iran’s dogs, the Houthis, on the Dhale-Murais front”. The caption reads [translated from Arabic]: “Al-Dhale Front- Southern Armed Forces.” The frames in this video match those from the video in the claim.
We also found another video from May 2019 with matching keyframes. It was posted by AlHadath, a Saudi Arabian YouTube channel, and titled “Yemen… A military leader targets the militias of North Al-Dala”. Both posts on YouTube confirm that the video is from at least five years ago, and suggest that it shows conflict in al-Dhalea governorate in Yemen.
Interestingly, in 2021, Fact Crescendo, a fact-checking organisation accredited by the IFCN, of which Soch Fact Check is also a signatory, debunked this video when it circulated with a different claim. According to the article, posts circulating at the time claimed the video was from Afghanistan and showed “the ambush between the Northern Alliance and Taliban in Panjshir”. Soch Fact Check also came across such a post where the video was shared with the title “Panjshir today” on a Russian social networking platform, Odnoklassniki, in September 2021. The fact-check found the video was originally uploaded in 2014 on YouTube and had no connection to Afghanistan. However, when we attempted to access this YouTube post from 2014, we found that it has now been deleted.
Soch Fact Check then found that the video in the claim was posted on Facebook in December 2014. Similar to the posts on YouTube, this Facebook post also linked the video to a conflict in Yemen and stated: “ #اليوم_مباشر The Qaif tribes have set an ambush for Rafzah Al-Houthi Qal Bu Zaid al-Khalifi, Yammmm in Barakin Al-Adi, Desna, I am all of them, and I am a tribe, I am full of enemies, and I am full of bullets.”
Most of the results from our reverse search linked the video to the Houthis or suggested that it is from Yemen. While Soch Fact Check could not ascertain the exact location or identify the episode of the conflict shown in the video, we can confirm that it predates the recent escalation of tensions at the Pak-Afghan border by at least a decade.
Soch Fact Check, therefore, concludes that the video is entirely unrelated to the recent conflict between Pakistan and the Afghan Taliban and rates the claim as false.
Virality
The X post garnered 8,649 views and was liked 188 times. It was also shared on X here.
Posts claiming that the video was linked to the conflict in Afghanistan appeared on Facebook here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here.
On X, here and here. On YouTube, it appeared here.
Conclusion: The video does not show the Pakistan Army attacking the Afghan Taliban. It is at least a decade old and is likely from Yemen.
Background image in cover photo: Al Jazeera
To appeal against our fact-check, please send an email to appeals@sochfactcheck.com