Fact check: Hezbollah is NOT destroying Israeli tanks. This 2023 video comes from Ukraine

Eight Israeli soldiers were killed in Lebanon on October 2 when Israeli troops carried out cross-border raids in southern Lebanon. Also the Lebanese political and paramilitary group Hezbollah said It destroyed Israeli tanks during the battle.

A now-viral video purports to show Israeli tanks being destroyed by Hezbollah. Sharing the video, an X user wrote“Hezbollah destroyed an Israeli tank that recently entered Lebanon.” Its archives can be viewed Here.

India Today's fact check revealed that the viral video is from 2023 and shows Ukrainian forces destroying a Russian tank.

Our probe

Backwards searching keyframes from the viral video led us to an X post from October 8, 2023. According to the post, this video comes from the Kreminna area in the Luhansk region of Ukraine. The post further claimed that Ukraine's 66th Mechanized Brigade destroyed 25 Russian tanks in four days. This means the video is old and has nothing to do with the ongoing conflict between Israel and Lebanon.

The official Ukrainian Defense Ministry report also shared the video on the same day and identified the tank in the video as a T-90M.

A search using related keywords led us to a longer version of the uploaded video YouTube in October 2023 and described this incident as stemming from the Russia-Ukraine War.

We also found several media reports from October 2023 that included the viral clip. According to the Czech news channel CNN Prima NewsThe incident occurred not far from Makjivka in the Luhansk region. The report also noted that the Ukrainian 66th Brigade destroyed a Russian T-90M tank on the battlefield. The T90s are one of Russia's most powerful armored vehicles and were used by Russia in its invasion of Ukraine.

A detailed report about this incident in Kiev Post notes that the Russian tank appears to have fired shells toward Ukrainian lines as a possible defensive tactic before being destroyed by an anti-tank missile fired by Ukrainian forces. The Russian military confirmed at the time the loss of 45 T-90 tanks and 2,362 tanks of all types since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

It is therefore clear that an old video from the Russia-Ukraine war was shared incorrectly, in which Hezbollah troops destroy an Israeli tank.

(Written by Ashish Kumar)