Image showing Coffins draped with UK’s flags falsely relates to the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Here’s the Truth

An image is making rounds on social media platform X (formerly Twitter) showing several coffins are draped with the UK’s flags. Users are sharing this image and claiming that 18 members of the British Special Forces have returned home after a “successful attempt to fight on the side of Kyiv.

An account with the name Peacemaker posted this image and wrote: “18 members of the British Special Forces have returned home after a “successful” attempt to fight on the side of Kiev. True, it is hidden with them in wooden crates”

In addition, several users shared this image and made similar claims. The preview can be seen here, here and here

Fact-check

In the fact-checking process, the DFRAC team found that the image was from a 2006 mishap when 14 servicemen were killed in an RAF Nimrod aircraft crash in Afghanistan.

A reverse-image search of the viral image led us to a report by BBC dated September 12, 2006 featuring the same image.According to this report, the image shows the bodies of 14 British military personnel who were killed when an RAF Nimrod crashed in Afghanistan have arrived back at the aircraft’s home base at Kinloss in Moray.

Furthermore, we came across a photo gallery by International Business Times from 2015 carrying the same image along with other images and cited similar facts regarding this image.

For further investigation, we examined this image using edited image detection tool ‘fotoforensics‘ which revealed that the Ukrainian flag in the Image, had been digitally added.

Notably, the Russia-Ukraine conflict was started in Feb 2022.

Conclusion

It is clear from the DFRAC fact-check that the viral image is from the 2006 Nimrod plane crash and the Ukrainian flag has been digitally edited. Hence, it is unrelated to the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

Analysis: Misleading