A video is being viral on social media allegedly depicting a Mauritius plane carrying 220 Hajj Pilgrims crashing and sinking into the Red Sea.
You can see one such social media post here:
The Facebook post mentions:
“Hajj Plane crashes in the Red Sea. All 220 Hajj pilgrims killed.”
However, Fact Crescendo’s findings show that the social media claims are false as an old video of Turkish Airbus A330 which was deliberately sunk to attract scuba divers, has been shared with baseless claims of a Mauritius plane on the way to Hajj crashing into Red Sea.
Fact Check:
We started our investigation by searching for keywords on the internet to find out if such an incident has been reported. A simple Google search led us to the Mauritius Agency website. Following the viral claims, Mauritius Travels debunked the claims stating that the claim that a Mauritius airline carrying Hajj Pilgrims crashed, killing 200 people, is false.
Mauritiustourtravels.com Archived Link
For further investigation, we first split the video shared on social media into small key fragments and applied Google reverse image search on the key fragments.
The Google reverse image search led us to the same video published by BBC News on 15 June 2019. According to the article published by BBC News, the video depicted a disused Turkish A330 Airbus being deliberately sunk off the North-Western Coast of Turkey to attract diving tourists. The article further stated that the 65m (213ft) long Airbus was plunged 30 m deep into the Aegean Sea of Ibrice Harbour in Edirne province.
Conclusion
Hence, Fact Crescendo found the social media claims of a Mauritius plane sinking into Red sea to be false and the viral video depicts deliberate sinking of a Turkish A 330 in September 2019.
Title:Old Video from Turkey shared as Mauritius plane carrying Hajj Pilgrims crashed into Red Sea.
Written By: Fact Crescendo TeamResult: False
