A Facebook post featuring a video claiming to show the ongoing fighting in Moyale has been found to be PARTLY FALSE. The video is accompanied by a Somali text that translates to, “The situation in Moyale, where fighting is ongoing, has intensified. Glory be to God, may God bring it to an end.” The footage shows several armed personnel dressed in camouflage uniforms, carrying rifles and moving through a dry, dusty landscape.
To establish the origin of the footage, PesaCheck extracted a keyframe from the video and conducted a Google reverse image search. The search led to a Shutterstock video depicting the same military exercise. The stock footage is captioned “CIRCA 2018 - Nigerian soldiers and multinational Special Ops forces conduct a patrol exercise together.” This suggests that the video may not be related to the current fighting in Moyale.
The footage also appeared in a Channels Television news report titled: “A Report On National Security Ahead Of 2019 Elections.” The report, published on 17 December 2018, addressed security concerns in Nigeria ahead of the country's 2019 elections. The footage appears during a segment on the fight against Boko Haram, under the on-screen headline “FIGHTING INSURGENCY.”
A comparison of the clip under scrutiny, the Shutterstock footage and the Channels Television report reveals matching visual details. The armed personnel are seen moving through the same dusty terrain, carrying similar rifles and wearing camouflage uniforms. The same white tent, trees, and buildings appear in the background, while the soldiers' movements and positions remain consistent throughout the footage.
These similarities establish that the circulating video was taken from older military exercise footage, rather than the recent fighting in Moyale. The claim surfaced following renewed fighting in Moyale , a border town shared by Kenya and Ethiopia. According to Reuters , clashes erupted on the Ethiopian side of Moyale in October 2026, forcing hundreds of residents, mainly women and children, to flee.
PesaCheck has reviewed the Facebook post and found it to be PARTLY FALSE. This post is part of an ongoing series of PesaCheck fact-checks examining content marked as potential misinformation on Facebook and other social media platforms. By partnering with Facebook and similar social media platforms , third-party fact-checking organisations like PesaCheck are helping to sort fact from fiction.
The fact-check was written by PesaCheck fact-checker Yussufmahat Abdi and edited by PesaCheck senior copy editor Mary Mutisya and chief copy editor Stephen Ndegwa . The article was approved for publication by PesaCheck.
Key points
- The video circulating on Facebook was taken from older military exercise footage, not the recent fighting in Moyale.
