Fact-check: Viral video of baby misattributed to Kurram violence
A reverse image search traced the clip to September 11, when it was first uploaded by a TikTok user
Updated Saturday Nov 30 2024
A widely shared video on social media in Pakistan, viewed over 2.3 million times, allegedly shows a child killed during recent violence in the Kurram district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
This claim is false. The video is unrelated to Kurram.
Claim
On November 23, a user on TikTok shared the caption: “The youngest martyr in Parachinar was only six-month-old.”
The 19-second clip shows a baby playing. It had been viewed over two million times, shared 4,800 times, and liked 169,000 times at the time of writing.
Similarly, on November 22, an X (formerly Twitter) user shared a 21-second video of a baby with the caption, “The smallest coffin is indeed the heaviest,” claiming the child was killed in a convoy attack in Parachinar.
Other identical claims can be found on Facebook, YouTube, and X.
Fact
The video is not from Pakistan and predates the recent violence in Kurram.
A reverse image search traced the clip to September 11, when it was first uploaded by a TikTok user with the caption: “My little sweetheart, mommy loves tou.” (sic)
The user identifies as a mother of two children, who has also posted other videos of the same child. The video was tagged with the location of Norway.
While Geo Fact Check could not independently verify the exact date and location of the recording, the video’s existence prior to November 21, when violence erupted in Kurram, confirms it is unrelated to the incident.
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