Ashraf Ghani
Ashraf Ghani has left Afghanistan for Tajikistan, according to Reuters.
Wikimedia Commons
  • Verified accounts on Facebook and Twitter said a clip showed Afghanistan's president fleeing Kabul.
  • Although Ashraf Ghani did leave on Sunday, the viral video was shot in July, according to outlets.
  • Facebook and Twitter labeled the video with "partly false" and "out of context" warnings.
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A widely circulated video that purported to show Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani fleeing the Taliban is actually from July.

The 17-second clip featured Ghani waving to a crowd before climbing up the red steps of a KamAir airplane. At least two verified accounts on Facebook and Twitter shared the video and falsely said that it showed Ghani fleeing Kabul as the Taliban stormed the nation's capital.

Although Ghani did leave Afghanistan for Tajikistan on Sunday, as Insider previously reported, the video was shot in July when he left the country for a two-day trip in Uzbekistan, according to Reuters and other outlets that debunked the video's claim. That was before the Taliban rapidly took over Afghanistan this past week.

A verified Facebook account with over 100,000 followers, the New York City local outlet Jewish Voice, circulated the video on Sunday with a caption alleging it showed Ghani's departure.

Facebook, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment, marked the video with a "partly false information" content warning and linked to a Reuters article.

On Sunday, the Islamic news outlet Tasnim News Agency posted the video with the misattribution to their verified Twitter account, which has over 260,000 followers.

Twitter added a warning label to the tweet that says, "This media is presented out of context."

The platform added the same label to a Sunday tweet of the video by the user @samiabrahim, who has over 400,000 followers. That particular tweet "was labeled based on our synthetic and manipulated media policy, specifically presentation with false context," a Twitter spokesperson told Insider.

The spokesperson also shared a link to a specific Twitter Moment established Tuesday morning that is debunking numerous misleading or contextless posts.

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