Claim: A video shows a minor accidentally shooting his father at a Pakistani wedding.
Fact: The video is from 2008 when a minor accidentally shot his father at a wedding in Aleppo, Syria.
On 21 October, X user @WarMonitorClips posted a video (archive) showing a toddler shooting his father during a wedding, and claimed: “Crazy footage from Pakistan [flag symbol]. Father gave the gun to his kid and he accidentally shoots him.”
At the beginning of the video, we see a man raising his hand and pointing a gun to the sky. The gesture appears to be that of celebratory aerial firing as he seems to be at an event with music in the background.
At timestamp 0:04, the camera moves away from the man to show the toddler, standing beside him. A few seconds later we see the child holding the gun in his hand, and shooting the man accidentally.
Soch Fact Check could not ascertain what happened between 0:04 and 0:15: whether the father forgot to lock the gun and handed it over to the child, or if the latter took it from him accidentally.
Celebratory aerial firing in Pakistan
Aerial firing is a common celebratory norm in Pakistan, especially at weddings, Independence Day celebrations, political rallies, etc.
Stray bullets from these celebrations have claimed the lives of innocent passersby or others present at the celebrations. In July 2024, a stray bullet killed 17-year-old Khadija, who was traveling alongside other guests to a wedding. Aerial firing during Independence Day celebrations left 95 injured in Karachi this year.
Section 337-H subsection 2 of the Pakistan Penal Code criminalizes any act that endangers an individual’s life and safety, including aerial firing. A person committing the act would face imprisonment for three months. However, the lax enforcement of laws has failed to end or reduce the prevalence of this practice as witnessed by the increasing number of aerial firing incidents.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check reverse-searched keyframes from the video and found it is from Syria, captured in 2008.
We found that the video (archive) was uploaded to Dailymotion in 2008, with the title “Child killed his father in a wedding by mistake.” It includes scenes of the clip that recently went viral. According to the description [translated from Arabic via Google Translate]: “The child’s father, Muhammad Tabbaa (33), had just finished shooting his pistol at a wedding held by the Al-Baradei family on their farm in Khan Al-Assal, west of Aleppo.”
Taking cues from the description, we conducted a keyword search and narrowed the timeline to 2008. The results showed that multiple publications had reported on the incident that took place nearly 16 years ago.
A 2014 Al Arabiya article about another incident involving a two-year-old shooting her mother at a shopping mall, included a screenshot from the video in question and quoted the incident from Syria further down in the article. According to the following translation of the article, the video is from December 2008 when “a two-year-old child accidentally shot his father, late at night at a wedding” in Aleppo, in northern Syria. The report further added that the father died at the hospital where he was taken for treatment.
Qatar Living’s website also carried a report about the shooting incident in October 2008, which confirmed that this tragedy took place in Syria. However, the shooting video cited in this article is no longer available on YouTube.
Lastly, we found a post including the same video on a discussion forum from 2008 which also mentioned that the incident took place in Syria.
Soch Fact Check, therefore, concludes the video of the shooting incident has no connection to Pakistan.
Virality
The X post garnered 228K views and was liked 1,300 times.
The claim also appeared on X here.
Conclusion: The video does not show a toddler shooting his father at a Pakistani wedding. In fact, the video is from a Syrian wedding in 2008.
Background image in cover photo: Wallpaper Abyss
To appeal against our fact-check, please send an email to appeals@sochfactcheck.com