This photo has circulated online since 2016 about Thai military training
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on June 25, 2020 at 05:58
- 2 min read
- By AFP India
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The photo was published in this Facebook post on June 20, 2020. It has been shared hundreds of times since.
The caption of the Facebook post states, in part: “He was also in that face-off of Galwan Valley. He said there were 300–400 men from India and 2000–2500 people from China. They did not know how the Chinese got in their circle. He said those people had rods, poles and stones with which they attacked”.
Renewed tensions between China and India at Galwan Valley near India-administered Ladakh led to a deadly clash that killed at least 20 Indian soldiers on June 15. The confrontation marked the first deadly incident in a long-running border dispute between the two Asian nuclear powers in nearly half a century, as reported by AFP here.
The photo was also shared alongside a similar claim here and here on Facebook, and here on Twitter.
However, the claim is false; this photo has circulated online since 2016 on Thai-language blogs.
A reverse image search on Google found the photo published here on a Thai blog in 2016. The photo was described as showing a training session for a special combat unit in the Thai army.
One of the other photographs published in the same blog post has a May 2011 date stamp.
Below is a screenshot of the photo in the misleading post in the 2016 Thai blog post:
The photo was also shared here in 2016 on another Thai-language blog alongside descriptions that say it was taken during a Thai military exercise.
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