Video of aircraft scuttling shared with baseless 'Red Sea plane crash' claims
The 24-second clip shows an aircraft surrounded by boats as it slowly sinks below the water's surface.
The claim was shared by other Thai users, as well as in Burmese and Arabic posts. It surfaced as millions of Muslim pilgrims descended on the holy city of Mecca ahead of the annual Hajj, which begins on June 4 (archived links here and here).
However, there have not been any credible reports of a plane carrying pilgrims from Muslim-majority Mauritania crashing in May 2025.
In response, Mauritania Airlines issued a statement via its official Facebook page on May 27, 2025 (archived link).
The statement reads, in part: "Some foreign social media pages circulated malicious rumours about the crash of a plane carrying Mauritanian pilgrims off the Red Sea, which is baseless news."
The statement also said that all the three flights carrying Mauritanian pilgrims arrived safely in Saudi Arabia via flights on May 23, 24, and 25.
A reverse image search using one of the video's keyframes found an identical YouTube video published on July 18, 2019 (archived link).
The video's title reads, "Turkey Airbus A330 Sinking Ibrice 14 June 2019".
The YouTube video matches the false clip at the 2:05 mark.
The video was also featured in reports by the BBC and Turkey's Anadolu Agency about a repurposed Airbus A330 plane that was sunk to create an artificial reef off the northwestern coast of Turkey (archived links here and here).
"The 65m (213ft) long aircraft was plunged 30m deep in the Aegean Sea off Ibrice Harbour in Edirne province," the BBC wrote.
The plane's livery belongs to a Turkish pipeline company, the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP), which also supported the scuttling of the plane to create the artificial reef for tourism, according to the Anadolu report.

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13 minutes ago
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The Hill
6 hours ago
- The Hill
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Rattana Meeying, another evacuee, said she had also lived through the 2011 clashes between the two countries but described this flare-up as worse. 'Children, old people, were hit out of the blue,' she said. 'I never imagined it would be this violent.' At the nearby Phanom Dong Rak hospital, periodic explosions could be heard Friday, and a military truck arrived with three injured Thai soldiers, including one who had both legs severed. Thursday's shelling shattered windows at one of the hospital's buildings and damaged its roof. In the neighboring Sisaket province, more villagers took their belongings and left homes in a stream of cars, trucks and motorbikes after they received an evacuation order on Friday. Across the border in Cambodia, villages on the outskirts of Oddar Meanchey province were largely deserted. Homes stood locked, while chickens and dogs roamed outside. Some villagers earlier dug holes to create makeshift underground bunkers, covering them with wood, tarpaulin and zinc sheets to shield themselves from shelling. Families with children were seen packing their belongings on home-made tractors to evacuate, though a few men refused to leave. A remote Buddhist temple surrounded by rice fields accommodated several hundred evacuated villagers. Women rested in hammocks, some cradling babies, while children ran about. Makeshift plastic tents were being set up under the trees. Veng Chin, 74, pleaded with both governments to negotiate a settlement 'so that I can return to my home and work on the farm.' ASEAN chair calls for calm The conflict marks a rare instance of armed confrontation between ASEAN member countries though Thailand has tangled with Cambodia before over the border and has had sporadic skirmishes with western neighbor Myanmar. Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said Friday that Thailand and Cambodia had agreed to a ceasefire and to withdraw their troops from the border, but requested more time before implementing the action, according to a report by Malaysia's Bernama national news agency. Anwar said he had spoken to both Cambodian leader Hun Manet and Thailand's Phumtham and urged them to open space for 'peaceful dialogue and diplomatic resolution,' while offering to have Malaysia facilitate talks. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has also called for restraint and urged both countries to resolve disputes through dialogue, according to U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq. It's the latest flareup in longstanding border tensions The 800-kilometer (500-mile) frontier between Thailand and Cambodia has been disputed for decades, but past confrontations have been limited and brief. The last major flare-up in 2011 left 20 dead. 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