Claim: A picture from the recent clashes at the Bannu peace rally shows a child smiling while covered in blood.
Fact: The claim is false because the image is not from Bannu. The picture appeared on social media as early as 2022 and has been repeatedly shared in different, misleading contexts.
On 20 July 2024, a user on X posted an image (archive) with the caption, “A young boy was shot by Pakistani military today in Bannu. The children of Pakhtunkhwa are being taught a lesson: you can not expect justice and equal rights from this oppressive military dictatorship in Pakistan.”
Bannu Incident
On 19 July, people in the Bannu district took to the streets in huge numbers, demanding peace and security against the surge in terrorism, following an attack in the Bannu Cantonment last week. Local traders and political parties organised the Bannu Aman March (peace rally), and participants were seen waving white flags as symbols of peace.
However, the situation escalated when clashes erupted between protesters and law-enforcement agencies which left several people injured and one dead. The violence by law enforcement was condemned by activists and human rights organisations, urging for transparent action by provincial and federal governments. Meanwhile, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has announced that it will constitute a commission to investigate the Bannu incident.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check conducted a reverse image search using Google Lens and Yandex to investigate the claim. The result led to the same image shared on 16 April 2022, by a Facebook page which attributed it to an attack in Afghanistan. According to the caption of the post, “Pakistan bombarded some areas of Paktika, Khost, Nimroz and Kunar today, leaving many civilian people injured and martyred. But we, the nation of five thousand-year history, tie the knot on the head of their ambassador. We must accept that we have defeated ourselves, not the world.”
This caption refers to the Pakistan military’s airstrikes on Afghanistan’s provinces of Khost and Kunar in April 2022, which killed 47 people including women and children.
The same image was also posted by Rahimshah Zarin, an information security auditor at Afghanistan’s Finance Ministry, on LinkedIn in April 2022. The caption of the post reads, “This child is injured in the bombardment of Pakistani jets on Afghan borders in Kunar and Khost provinces. His laugh and bleeding hurts very much. We are not forgetting the Pakistani brutality.”
The same image was also shared on 18 April 2022 by Facebook and Instagram users, implying that it is from Chaghi Balochistan. A keyword search on Google led to Dawn’s report from 18 April 2022, which said that four people were injured in protests across the Chaghi district in Balochistan. These protests erupted on 15 April in the district’s Nokkundi and Dalbandin areas against the killing of a driver by security forces near the Pak-Afghan border.
Soch Fact Check could not independently verify the origin of the picture and whether it was from Pakistan or Afghanistan. However, the image on the internet as early as 2022 confirms that it does not show an injured child from the recent clashes at the Bannu peace rally.
Virality
The viral image of the injured child was shared along with original videos and pictures of the Bannu incident on social media. Jamaat-e-Islami member Senator Mushtaq Ahmad also posted it on X where the image received 14,000 likes and more than 6000 reposts. The archived versions can be seen here, here and here.
On Facebook, it was shared here and here.
Conclusion: An image of a child smiling with a bloodied face is not from the recent clashes in Bannu, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The image appeared on the internet as early as April 2022 and has been linked to attacks in Chaghi, Balochistan and airstrikes in Afghanistan, which could not be independently verified.
Background image in cover photo: AFP
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Note: The article was updated on 24 July after the correction in the date of the Bannu peace rally.