The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting on Saturday rejected claims about a Pakistani jet being shot down in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar and the pilot being captured.
The ministry’s fact check account on X attributed the claims to Afghan Taliban officials that were “amplified by Indian media”.
“The Ministry of Defence of the so-called Islamic Emirate claimed that Afghan forces shot down a Pakistani fighter jet in Nangarhar and captured its pilot alive. The claim was widely amplified by Indian media and Afghan propaganda outlets,” it said.
The ministry further said Pakistan’s armed forces had not reported any aircraft loss and stated that no “independent international media outlet or defence monitoring agency” had verified the claim.
“The story relies solely on statements from Afghan officials and selective media amplification,” it said.
It further stated that there was no visual proof of crash debris, the wreckage site or the captured pilot. “No geolocated imagery or satellite evidence supports the claim,” it said, adding that “in modern conflict environments, verified crashes are rapidly documented — none exists in this case”.
It said that viral footage being shared as “jet crash evidence” was from an unrelated panic situation in Afghanistan.
“Multiple videos used in the narrative are old clips being recycled to fit the false claim,” the ministry said.
It also pointed to a “misleading image” shared by TOLO News, saying: “he image corresponds to a Russian aircraft incident in Turkey in 2021”.
“Reusing unrelated foreign crash imagery is a deliberate attempt to construct a false narrative,” the ministry said.
It said that the past two days, “hundreds of fake or misleading videos linked to the India–Afghan propaganda ecosystem have been debunked”.
“The current jet claim fits into the same coordinated disinformation cycle. No credible defence analysis suggests Afghan forces possess the operational capability demonstrated in the claim,” it said.
Meanwhile, Foreign Office Spokesperson Tahir Hussain Andrabi said that Afghan claims of downing a Pakistani jet and capturing a pilot were “totally untrue”.
“That’s a false claim. Totally untrue,” Andrabi told AFP.
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