August 27, 2021

Do the images show drones shot down by TPLF forces?

HAQCHECKFact checking

HaqCheck looked into the tweet and rated it as “FALSE.”

Avatar: Rehobot Ayalew
By Rehobot Ayalew

Rehobot is a lead fact-checker at HaqCheck. She is a trainer and a professional who works in fact-checking and media literacy.

Do the images show drones shot down by TPLF forces?

There was a tweet on August 26, 2021, showing two images claiming to show a shot-down military drone in the Amhara region of Ethiopia. The caption reads “... the Tigray Defense Forces (referring to TPLF forces) has shot down one of the drones used by the Ethiopian federal government in a battlefront in Amhara region….”

The tweet has been retweeted more than 375 times until the time this article is published. HaqCheck looked into the tweet and rated it as “FALSE.”

There has been an ongoing armed conflict between the Ethiopian federal government and theTigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) forces since November 2020. The war broke out after the federal government started a military offensive against TPLF forces accusing them of attacking a military base in Tigray. As the conflict persisted, Ethiopian military figures acknowledged the use of drones, hinting the air force is equipped with modern drones.

The fact being so, a reverse image search of the pictures shows that the images are not related to the current issue in the northern part of Ethiopia. The first image was shared on October 20, 2020. The picture, among others, shows a destroyed Turkish unmanned aerial vehicle by the defense army of Artsakh. The picture was believed to be taken during the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war.

Original image 1

The second image was first shared on July 16, 2020. The picture shows a shot down Armenian drone by Azerbaijani forces amid clashes across the countries’ northern border area.

Original image 2

In this regard, HaqCheck assessed the tweet and confirmed that the images do not show an Ethiopian government drone shot down by TPLF forces, rendering it FALSE.