Image of Crimea explosion falsely linked to India-Pakistan conflict

Published on May 15, 2025 at 07:56
3 min read
By Masroor GILANI, AFP Pakistan

Prior to Islamabad and New Delhi agreeing a ceasefire that brought four days of intense fighting between the nuclear-armed arch-rivals to a halt, an image was widely shared online in posts falsely claiming it showed the destruction of an Indian missile defence system. The photo previously circulated in reports about an explosion of ammunition at a military site in Crimea in July 2023.

The image of a fireball and thick black smoke was shared on Facebook on May 8, 2025, as India and Pakistan exchanged tit-for-tat jet fighter, drone, missile and artillery attacks across their shared frontier.

"Indian S-400 air defense system site in Adampur hit by unknown missiles and drones," reads both the Urdu and English-language captions of the image.

The violence, the worst between the neighbours in decades, erupted after New Delhi launched missiles at sites in Pakistan it said were hosting militants responsible for an attack on tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir (archived link).

India had accused Pakistan of backing the "terrorists" behind the April 22 attack -- a charge Islamabad denies.

Four days of intense fighting that killed at least 70 people followed, before the arch-rivals agreed to a ceasefire on May 10 that US President Donald Trump said was brokered by Washington.

Screenshot of the false Facebook post, captured on May 15, 2025

The same image also circulated in similar X posts that were shared hundreds of times.

While Pakistan's military claimed on May 10 that its air force had destroyed the defence system, Indian media reported that Prime Minister Narendra Modi "debunked Pakistan's claim" by posing in front of it during a visit to the Adampur airbase on May 13 (archived here and here).

The circulating image also predates the current conflict by almost two years.

Crimea explosion

A reverse image search led to the same photo published in several articles, including from American magazine Newsweek, about explosions in July 2023 in Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula which Russia annexed a decade earlier (archived here).

The photo in the Newsweek article is credited to photographer Viktor Korotayev of Russian media Kommersant and to AFP which also distributed the photo.

"A picture shows detonation of ammunition caused by a fire at a military training field in the Kirovsky district of Crimea on July 19, 2023," reads its caption in AFP's archives.

An AFP report from July 19, 2023 said the fire prompted authorities to order the evacuation of more than 2,000 civilians (archived link).

"Authorities did not specify the cause of the blaze, but some Russian media reported that detonations were heard in the area and footage showed columns of black smoke in the sky," the report added.

Screenshot comparison of the falsely shared image (left) and the same photo in AFP's archives (right)

The conflict between India and Pakistan has triggered a flurry of misinformation, some of which AFP has debunked here.

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