As Islamist-led rebels swept into Damascus and Bashar al-Assad fled, some social media users claimed a video showed the ousted Syrian president’s plane downed and in flames. But the clip is unrelated to the December 2024 offensive; the depicted aircraft crashed in India months earlier after a technical issue forced the pilot to eject.
“PLANE CRASH OF #Bashar_al_Assad NEAR #Homs ! IT DEPARTED #DAMASCUS AIRPORT, TOOK A TURN AND REACHED AN ALTITUDE OF 500 METERS! THEN CRASHED! #Syrie #Syrian,” says a December 7, 2024 post on X.
Screenshot from X taken December 9, 2024
Similar posts and some online articles shared the same seven-second clip of a fiery jet. It also spread in Polish.
The video came as crowds in the streets of Damascus cheered the dramatic end to more than five decades of Assad family rule in Syria. The government fell December 8, days after the rebels launched a surprise offensive — the latest in a drawn-out civil war that killed 500,000 people after Assad cracked down on anti-government protests more than 13 years ago.
Russian news agencies said December 8 that Assad and his family were in Moscow, although the Kremlin a day later refused to confirm the ousted Syrian leader was in the country. The head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor, told AFP Assad left Syria via Damascus International Airport.
The lack of official confirmation from the Syrian presidency has fueled speculation online about Assad’s whereabouts, with some flight watchers sharing data from Flightradar24 that showed one plane from Damascus making a U-turn before losing signal (archived here and here). The flight tracking service said on X that the aircraft “was old with an older transponder generation, so some data might be bad.”
Regardless of Assad’s whereabouts, the video of a downed plane on fire does not show his aircraft — the clip is more than three months old and shows a crash in India.
Reverse image searches revealed the footage dates to September 2, when media organizations such as India Today and the Indian Express published it (archived here, here and here). The clip also appears on the online video licensing website Newsflare (archived here).
According to the reports, the aircraft was an Indian Air Force fighter jet that crashed in the city of Barmer while on a training mission. The pilot safely ejected from the plane after a technical issue.
“During a routine night training mission in Barmer sector, an IAF MiG-29 encountered a critical technical snag, forcing the pilot to eject,” the Indian Air Force posted on X at the time (archived here). “The pilot is safe and no loss of life or property was reported. A Court of Inquiry has been ordered.”
Other footage shows the crashed plane from additional angles (archived here and here).
AFP has debunked other misinformation about Syria here.
