Claim: A picture of multiple shrouded dead bodies in an ambulance shows PTI protesters killed by Pakistani authorities during the November 2024 unrest.
Fact: The photo has no connection to the PTI’s protest; it is, in fact, from Palestine and surfaced as early as 1 November 2024, over three weeks before the Islamabad demonstration.
On 27 November 2024, Facebook user ‘عامر کمانڈو’ posted (archive) a picture of the inside of an ambulance with a number of dead bodies wrapped in white shrouds, as well as two individuals, one of whom has a bandage on his head and the other is seen wearing a dark hoodie.
The Facebook user captioned the image as follows:
“محسن نقوی اور عطا تارڑ ان سب کا بدلہ آپ سے لیں گے وقت کا انتخاب ہم کریں گے
[We will take revenge on you, Mohsin Naqvi and Attaullah Tarar, for all of this; we will choose the time.]”
That the image was posted on 27 November — the day after a crackdown by authorities on the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) protesters in Islamabad — and the caption references Naqvi and Tarar, the federal ministers for interior and information, respectively, suggests that the user intended to portray it as evidence of what the party has claimed was a “massacre”.
Related: AI-generated images of bloodied Islamabad road go viral after PTI’s November protest
Soch Fact Check noticed that while many people have similarly shared pictures from the raid and what transpired afterwards with the hashtag #IslamabadMassacre, a number of them are not authentic.
On 24 November, PTI supporters from across Pakistan started heading to the federal capital’s D-Chowk for a protest to demand the release of all political prisoners, including party founder and former Prime Minister Imran Khan, the reversal of a recent constitutional amendment, and to reclaim what they say was a “stolen mandate” from the 2024 general elections.
PTI protests in Islamabad
Khan 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 has been suspended (archived here, here, here, here, and here, respectively).
He had issued a “final call” asking his supporters to gather for a protest at Islamabad’s D-Chowk, a famous location for demonstrations that is part of the governmental area called the Red Zone. Party leaders and thousands of the supporters from the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and Punjab provinces mobilised right away and moved towards the capital.
On 26 November, Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi issued (archive) stern warnings against entering D-Chowk, while police and law enforcement agencies (LEAs) engaged in aggressive crowd control tactics. Pakistan Army troops were deployed (archive) to defend the Red Zone, especially as Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko was visiting to meet (archive) with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif at the time.
Read more: PTI’s Sher Afzal Marwat has not been arrested, yet
Internet blackouts were reported (archive) in Islamabad and containers set up to block the protesters’ routes. Multiple other cities also experienced slow connectivity or disruptions to social media.
Police also fired (archive) rubber bullets and tear gas at protesters attempting to enter the area. According to some 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), on the other hand, 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 CM Gandapur, made a “frantic escape” in the night when authorities launched a raid to disperse the protesters.
Read more: Al Jazeera did not term PTI’s Nov 2024 protest ‘largest march in Pakistan’s history’
However, the same day, Gandapur stated that the protest was continuing and that the final decision was for Khan to make.
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, including Kalashnikov guns, recovered, over 70 security personnel injured, and more than 165 safe city cameras were damaged.
Khan has threatened a “nationwide civil disobedience movement” if his negotiation team’s two demands — releasing under-trial prisoners and establishing a judicial commission to probe the 9 May 2023 and 26 November 2024 altercations — 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”.
Also read: Visual of PTI protestor apparently praying on container is real, not AI-generated
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 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 they were allowed inside. The staff there, 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 observed some of those who were brought in for treatment. It noted that according to official sources, there were “17 civilian fatalities” from the authorities’ gunfire and “hundreds more had been injured”.
Related: Did PTI supporters swim across a river to reach Islamabad on 24 Nov?
The publication reported 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 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, two 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.
Read more: Viral video of apparent PTI protesters is actually from East Timor
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 govt, 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 Information Minister Attaullah Tarar.
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 said, “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.”
Also read: Decade-old image falsely linked to recent PTI rally in Islamabad’s D-Chowk
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 Gandapur, the provincial chief minister, of making “baseless inflammatory statements”.
Read more: Old video of doctor resurfaces amid PTI’s 2024 protests
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’s or the government’s tallies of casualties comprising party workers and security officials, respectively.
Fact or Fiction?
We conducted a reverse-image search, which led us to multiple social media posts from 1 November, including one by Palestinian author Mohammed Omer Almoghayer and another by Eye On Palestine, an account that posts updates about the situation in Palestine.
The aforementioned posts include a larger version of the image from the claim that features the name of the photographer: “مؤمن القريناوي MOMEN SAMEER”.
Also read: Shrouded person using phone is not a PTI protester
We also came across this X post by @gazanotice, which shows the same ambulance with bodies — given the condition of the shrouds, the two men, one of whose head is bandaged and the other is wearing a maroon-and-black hoodie, and other elements — but from a slightly different angle.
That the photo was posted by Palestinian and Palestine-focused accounts on 1 November, many days before the PTI’s November 2024 protests, proves that it is unrelated and the claim is false.
Virality
Soch Fact Check found that the image was posted here, here, here, here, and here on Facebook and here and here on Threads.
It was also posted on X (formerly Twitter) here, here, and here, the third of which is by musician Salman Ahmad, a rock guitarist who shot to fame in the 1990s. Considered Khan’s close aide, he was recently expelled from the PTI, according to a notification issued 18 December 2024.
However, Ahmad — who has been recently criticising key PTI leaders on social media — has said he “was never a member of [the party]”. The guitarist was appointed Khan’s focal person on culture in 2022 and, in 2018, he had said he could not support the ex-premier.
Ahmad has made multiple dubious claims in the past that were promptly debunked by Soch Fact Check.
Conclusion: The photo is from Palestine and surfaced as early as 1 November 2024, over three weeks before the PTI’s protest in Islamabad.
Background image in cover photo: PTIOfficial
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