As Muslims from across the world travelled to Mecca in Saudi Arabia for the annual hajj pilgrimage in early June 2025, images of an aircraft in flames were shared on social media alongside claims that a Mauritanian plane carrying pilgrims had crashed, killing over 200 people. This is false; one of the photographs dates back 18 years to an unrelated event in the Republic of the Congo, while a second image shows an air disaster in South Korea from December 2024 . The Mauritanian government also denied the claims.
“A plane carrying Mauritanian hajj pilgrims crashed on their way to the holy city of Mecca. More than 210 hajj pilgrims were martyred,” reads part of a text overlay published on a TikTok post on May 28, 2025.
The caption of the post, shared more than 1,300 times, includes the hashtag “#airplanecrashmauritania”.
Screenshot of the false TikTok post, taken June 5, 2025
The video contains two static images of burning planes on a runway, edited with a motion filter and Arabic music playing in the background.
Similar claims were published elsewhere on Facebook here and here.
Millions of Muslims make the once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage each year to the site believed to be the birthplace of the prophet Mohammed (archived here).
However, posts claiming the images of a burning plane show a Mauritanian air disaster involving Muslims on their way to Mecca in June 2025 are false.
Old images
Search results showed that the image has been previously linked to reports of different airline disasters.
Two online publications dating from 2022 (archived here) and 2024 (archived here) also previously used the photograph to illustrate two separate incidents.
The first occurred when a Nigerian air-force plane crashed in April 2022, killing the two pilots on board (archived here). The second incident, reported by the BBC in December 2023, wasn’t a crash at all, but involved a NAF plane that apparently mistakenly fired at worshippers in a mosque in Kaduna, northwestern Nigeria, leaving some 85 people dead (archived here).
However, reverse image searches revealed that the photo was published by aviation website Airliners, on May 10, 2007 (archived here) and showed a Russian-made Ilyushin Il-76td military cargo plane fire that occurred at Pointe-Noire Agostino Neto Airport, in the southwest of the Republic of the Congo.
“The Il-76 freighter caught fire on the ground while it was being loaded in preparation for a flight to Brazzaville (BZV),” reads the photo caption.
The markings on the nose of the plane in the TikTok post clearly match those in the original image.
Screenshots comparing the first image from the false post (left) and the original photo published by Airliners (right)
Various articles in local news outlets from 2007 corroborate the date and location of this incident, stating that there were no casualties (archived here and here).
Additional images of the event found on online forum Flightstory (archived here) were used alongside a Google Earth search to pinpoint the location of the fire, placing it next to an air-traffic control tower seen in a photograph taken outside the airport.
The spot where the plane burnt – located behind the control tower – is still visible on Google satellite imagery taken in 2018 (seen here).
Screenshots comparing image of the 2007 fire published on Flightstory (top) and Google Earth view (bottom)
Reverse image searches for the second image in the TikTok video led to an AFP report published on France 24 about a South Korean passenger plane that crashed in December 2024, killing 179 people (archived here).
Featured in the AFP article is a photograph showing the damage to the plane. The caption in AFP’s archives reads: “Firefighters and recovery teams work at the scene where a Jeju Air Boeing 737-800 series aircraft crashed and burst into flames at Muan International Airport in Muan, some 288 kilometres southwest of Seoul on December 30, 2024.”
JUNG YEON-JEAFP
JUNG YEON-JE / AFP
The photo used in the false claim appears to have been altered to remove the South Korean flag, which is clearly visible on the side of the aircraft in the AFP photograph.
Screenshots comparing the second image from the false post (top) and the original AFP photograph published by France 24 (bottom)
AFP Fact Check did not find any credible reports on a recent Mauritanian plane crash.
However, Mauritania’s state-run news outlet published a statement confirming that all hajj pilgrims arrived safely on June 4, 2025 (archived here).
Additionally, Mauritanian Airlines dismissed all claims of a crash in a statement published on Facebook on May 27, 2025 (archived here).
“Some foreign social media pages have circulated malicious rumors about a plane carrying Mauritanian pilgrims crashing off the Red Sea. These reports are completely unfounded,” reads the statement in Arabic.
“Mauritania Airlines confirms that all Mauritanian pilgrims have arrived safely and securely in the Holy Land, thank God, and no accidents have been reported related to the flights organized in this context.”
AFP Fact Check has previously debunked other images relating to this claim here and here.
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