Recently, a video has been widely circulated on social media with the claim: “Plane crash involving Mauritanian Hajj pilgrims. On the coast of the Red Sea, on the way to the holy Mecca, the plane crashed, and more than 210 Hajj pilgrims were martyred.”
That is, the circulated video is claimed to be of this plane crash.
See posts on Facebook spreading this claim here (archive), here (archive), and here (archive).
See the video circulating on Instagram here.
See the video on YouTube here.
Fact Check
Investigation by the Rumor Scanner team reveals that the circulated video is not footage of a recent plane
crash involving Mauritanian Hajj pilgrims. Rather, the video has been available online for at least six years, being shared as footage of a near-crash incident involving a flight by Indonesian airline Lion Air. In this investigation, multiple keyframes from the video in question were reverse image searched, leading to a report published on October 31, 2018 by the Philippines-based news outlet Philippine News. The report includes a video that matches the one being circulated with the current claim.
The report states that on October 29, 2018, a Lion Air flight crashed. The circulated video, however, shows a previous flight of the same aircraft that nearly crashed but landed safely. The video was shared in the current misleading context by a Facebook page named “Viral wave trending,” and the Philippine News article included the video accordingly.
Later review of the “Viral wave trending” Facebook page shows that the video was posted on October 30, 2018.
Additionally, the same video was seen being circulated on multiple platforms in 2018 with claims related to the mentioned Indonesian plane crash, as shown here. However, the exact date and origin of the video could not be definitively confirmed. What is confirmed is that the video is not recent, but rather from at least six years ago.
Further investigation into whether any recent plane crash involving Mauritanian Hajj pilgrims actually occurred led to a report published on May 27 by Nigeria-based news outlet Blueprint. The report states: “The rumor circulating about a Mauritanian pilgrims’ plane crashing off the Red Sea coast is false, the government has said. Mauritania’s Director of Hajj at the Ministry of Islamic Affairs, El Waly Taha, denied the claim, confirming that all Mauritanian pilgrims are safe and have arrived in the holy lands without incident. Likewise, Mauritania Airlines confirmed that all pilgrims were transported safely and securely to Saudi Arabia, with no incidents reported on any of the scheduled flights. The company clarified that it operated three outbound flights for this year’s Hajj season.”
Conclusion
An at least six-year-old video is being falsely circulated as footage of a recent plane crash involving Mauritanian Hajj pilgrims—a claim that is false.
Sources
- Philippine News – Lion Air Plane Tragedy: Video Footage Of Previous Near Crash Incident
- Viral wave trending – Facebook Post
- Shafaqna – A video from inside the Indonesian plane during the fall
- Blueprint – Mauritania government speaks on ‘pilgrims’ plane crash off Red sea coast’
