Post claiming to show combat drone crash in Ethiopia uses unrelated images
- Published on February 2, 2024 at 10:55
- 3 min read
- By Tolera FIKRU GEMTA, AFP Ethiopia
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The Amharic-language post was published on January 24, 2024 and shared more than 50 times.
“Abiy Ahmed’s drone crashes on takeoff for the third time,” reads its headline in reference to Ethiopia's prime minister.
“A drone armed with four bombs intending to attack the people of Gojjam and destroy a church crashed today at 11:30 am at an air force compound,” the post says. Gojjam is a zone in the Amhara region.
The post continues: “Air Force sources confirm that the Turkish Bayraktar B-2 drone has crashed for the third time. Sources have revealed that fascist Abiy Ahmed, who lost three drones in a week, became angry and desperate.”
Armed conflict in Amhara
The armed conflict between the Ethiopian army and a militia group known as Fano has been raging since July last year (archived here). Fano sided with the federal government during the Tigray war that ended in November 2022. However, the rebels turned against their former ally when it decided to disband regional armed forces.
International media reported that the federal government recently carried out deadly drone strikes against Fano in the Amhara region (archived here).
Earlier this month, the Ethiopian National Defense Force displayed a pair of new Su-30 fighter jets amidst the growing armed conflict (archived here). Tensions also mounted between Ethiopia and Somalia after the former signed an agreement granting it access to a port of the self-declared state of Somaliland on January 1, 2024.
However, the photos do not show incidents in Ethiopia.
Unrelated drone photos
AFP Fact Check conducted reverse image searches and established that they were unrelated to Ethiopia.
Search results for the first photo of a drone crashing in a street confirm it was published in 2016 in an article on the website Into the Void Science (archived here). Buildings and vehicles can be seen in the original photo, which were cut out in the false post.
The article is based on research conducted by Johns Hopkins University on June 8, 2016 (archived here).
Results for the second image of a drone in mid-air flight reveal that it is a screenshot of a video published in 2017 by the website Military.com (archived here).
The accompanying article explains that this aircraft is the US Air Force’s MQ-9 Reaper combat drone.
Other photos
The third picture – which does not feature a drone, only what appears to be singed grass – appeared in a TikTok video shared by an account called “voicetovoiceless” in December 2023 (archived here).
The user alleged that it showed “Amhara farmers' crops burned by the Ethiopian army”.
AFP Fact Check is still tracking information about the source of this picture and the fourth image shared in the post, which shows people in a street with flames and thick smoke in the background.
The TikTok account who published the clip is yet to respond to our request for comment.
There have been no reports about a drone crash in the Amhara region amid the ongoing conflict.
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