Did widely-shared clips show fires and explosions in the Pakistani city of Karachi during May 2025 clashes with India? No, that's not true: Some of the videos in question had been online for several weeks before that conflagration began, and therefore had no link to the later conflict. One was recorded during a market fire in Sadiqabad, Pakistan in March, another likely during a fire in Ghana, and one appears to have been AI-generated.
The clips were presented as showing Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, and as being linked to the May 2025 clashes between India and Pakistan, in a May 8, 2025 post on X (archived here), along with the following text caption:
Pakistan's Port City and Economic Capital Karachi is in flames 🔥
#IndiaPakistanWar #OperationSindoor #OperationSindoor2
#IndianNavy #IndianArmedForces #BharatMataKiJai
The clips can be viewed in full below:
Pakistan's Port City and Economic Capital Karachi is in flames 🔥 #IndiaPakistanWar #OperationSindoor #OperationSindoor2 #IndianNavy #IndianArmedForces #BharatMataKiJai pic.twitter.com/NZtUHre7By
-- Amitabh Chaudhary (@MithilaWaala) May 9, 2025
In reality, none of the videos were recorded in Karachi in the context of the May 2025 clashes.
Video #1 -- March 27, 2025 market fire in Sadiqabad
The first clip shows a market fire in the town of Sadiqabad, in the Punjab province of Pakistan, in March 2025. A side-by-side comparison clearly demonstrates that the clip shared on X in May 2025 (shown on the left below) was recorded at the same incident shown in a March 27, 2025, video on YouTube, which was described in an Urdu caption (translated into English using Google) as:
A fire broke out in Sadiqabad Landa...
(Source: Lead Stories composite of screenshots from X and YouTube)
The March 27 fire at the Sadiqabad Landa bazaar was reported by local news outlets at the time.
Video #2 -- Online since April 15, 2025 at the latest
It's less clear where the second clip was recorded, but it had been online since mid-April, meaning it cannot possibly have any connection to the India-Pakistan clashes of May 7-9.
An April 15 Facebook post described the footage as showing a fire at a mosque in an unspecified location:
(Source: Facebook screenshot)
A May 4 re-posting of the same footage described it as showing a "mud house" fire in the city of Kot Addu, Punjab province, Pakistan. Though it remains unclear exactly where and when the video was recorded, the fact that it's been online since April 15 at the latest means it has no connection to the May 2025 clashes between India and Pakistan.
Video #3 -- Likely AI-generated, not Karachi
This clip appears to show the aftermath of a large explosion in a major city, and a skyline including a mosque. However, there are a few significant problems with it.
Firstly, it does not appear to be Karachi, as the following skyline comparison shows:
(Source: Lead Stories composite image of X screenshot and Kashiff/Wikimedia Commons)
Secondly, the "mosque" building shown as the camera pans across does not appear to exist, and shows signs of having been created using AI. Despite the ample online availability of images of many significant buildings and places of worship in Karachi and Pakistan more broadly, a reverse image search for the "mosque" shown in the video yielded no results.
Moreover, its design contains assymetrical and irregular features, whereas symmetry and regularity are key characteristics of Islamic architecture and art. For example, the ground-level of doorways feature: a near-rectangular shape; a curved arch; and a different curved arch. The third-storey arches are: perfectly rectangular; a curved arch with a relatively wide base; a differently-curved arch with a narrower base:
(Source: X screenshot)
Finally, the ground-floor hall that extends to the right of the domed buidling has several irregularly shaped and sized "arches", as well as a particularly unusual feature which appears to consist of a vertical column with two curved arches emanating sideways from it, creating the overall shape of an upper-case "B." Such aesthetic and logical errors are typical of AI-generated imagery:
(Source: X screenshot)
Video #4 -- Online since April 3, 2025 at the latest
This footage appears in an April 3 post on YouTube, meaning it cannot not be linked to the May 2025 clashes between India and Pakistan:
(Source: YouTube screenshot)
Certain visual details suggested the footage might show the aftermath of a March 2025 fire at a market in Adum, near the city of Kumasi in Ghana.
