Does video labelled on social media as "...footage of the Indian Army's attack on Sialkot, Pakistan" authentically show a 2025 Indian Army assault on its neighbor? No, that's not true: It is misleadingly re-labelled Al Jazeera footage lifted from 2023 coverage of the Gaza war between Israel and Hamas. At the time of writing this, there had been no credible reporting of an all-out Indian Army attack on Sialkot, a regional capital near the India-Pakistan border.
The video was posted April 30, 2025 (archived here) by the @kiranpatel1977 account under a "Breaking News" headline. It was captioned:
Al Jazeera Channel has released new footage of the Indian Army's attack on Sialkot, Pakistan.
#Sialkot #IndianArmy #IndiaPakistan #PahelgamTerroristattack #PehalgamTerroristAttack
At the time this fact check was written, the X post looked like this:
(Source: X.com screenshot by Lead Stories.)
The footage used to claim Al Jazeera had an April 30, 2025 breaking news report on an Indian Army attack on Sialkot, Pakistan had been aired by Al Jazeera more than a year earlier, in a report about an Israeli airstrike near an Indonesian hospital in northern Gaza (archived here):
(Source: X.com and YouTube.com screenshots arranged into comparison graphic by Lead Stories.)
Lead Stories searched the Google News index of thousands of websites, using the search terms "Indian Army AND attack AND Sialkot" and found no credible reporting of April, 2025 airstrikes by India in Sialkot, Pakistan. Instead, the search turned up reports on tensions in the region and preparations being undertaken by the Pakistani defense forces.
Lead Stories searched Al Jazeera's website for reporting about Sialkot (archived here) and found no 2025 reports of Indian airstrikes or attacks on Sialkot:
(Source: AlJazeera.com screenshot taken by Lead Stories.)
The claim was also checked in an April 30, 2025 fact check by Digital Forensics, Research and Analytics Centre, based in New Delhi, India.
Read more fact checks about hoaxes and misinformation that use Al Jazeera video here.
