This video of a man firing a machine gun has circulated online since at least 2019
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on September 9, 2021 at 06:38
- 2 min read
- By AFP Hong Kong
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The video was shared in this simplified Chinese-language tweet on September 8. It has been viewed more than 100,000 times.
The caption translates to English as: "The Taliban fighters were ecstatic when they got the US automatic heavy machine gun weapon presented by Mr Biden.
"The test-firing was successful, killing 17 of them".
The clip shows a group of men firing a machine gun on a tripod.
Suddenly, they appear to lose control of the weapon and it begins firing uncontrollably.
The video was shared alongside a similar claim on Facebook and Weibo after the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan and the US military withdrew from the country.
However, the claim is false.
AFP found a longer version of the same video published on YouTube on March 8, 2019.
The title reads: "An Iraqi man shooting!"
Corresponding images to what is shown in the misleading posts can be seen from the YouTube video's 26-second mark:
An AFP journalist said the men in the video can be heard speaking Arabic in a dialect that originates from western Iraq.
The man showing people how to use the weapon can be heard saying: "Film please" and "Shoot the flag!"
After the accident, a man off-camera can be heard saying: "No, no one is wounded".
The same video was also shared in 2019 here and here on YouTube and here on Twitter.
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