On 22 October 2026, the chief of India’s Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), Shatrujeet Kapur, said face-offs with Chinese troops were continuing at several places along the border in Arunachal Pradesh, the first official confirmation of the stand-offs, as reported here. Within days, a short video of soldiers in a rocky valley began circulating as proof that the two armies were now firing at each other, and it reached Sri Lankan feeds with a Tamil caption on 26 October.
Because India and China are Sri Lanka’s two largest partners, a border war between them is news that Sri Lankan readers care about. We checked where the video was filmed, when it was first posted and what the two governments have actually said.
Social Media Posts:
The reel carries an English on-screen caption, “China & India have fire exchanges in a disputed territory of Arunachal Pradesh due to ongoing face-offs on LAC,” with the watermark “@war_threats.” In Sri Lanka it was posted on 26 October 2026 by a Colombo-based personal account, with a Tamil caption summarizing the ITBP chief’s remarks on the Arunachal stand-off and the role of ITBP’s “Shaurya” commandos.
The same clip spread on X, where an Arabic-language account posted it on 25 October 2026, captioned as “the border between India and China this morning”; that post was viewed about 1.2 million times. It also appeared on TikTok and on several Facebook pages with the “fire exchanges” text.
Facebook 1 | Archived Link | Facebook 2 | X 1 | TikTok 1
Below is the short video clip getting shared implying to be scene of these fire exchanges between Indian and Chinese troops.
Claim Under Test:
The video shows Indian and Chinese troops exchanging fire in Arunachal Pradesh during the face-offs confirmed in October 2026.
Fact Check:
The video is a Kazakhstan special forces training drill from July 2026
We split the reel into keyframes and ran a reverse image search. Copies of the clip had been circulating for months, and the earliest source we found is an Instagram reel posted on 28 July 2026 by “tactical_federation”, the account of Kazakhstan’s Federation of Tactical Training, here Instagram.
Its Russian-language caption says the federation held sessions for servicemen of the Special Operations Forces of Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Defence at the “Koktal” training range in the town of Zharkent, to bring training closer to the conditions of modern combat. The reel is about 27 seconds long; the viral version is a 15-second cut of it.
The original footage can be seen below.
Original Instagram reel (28 July 2026)
The viral frame matches the original frame for frame
We compared both videos frame by frame. At 0:12 in the viral reel and 0:12 in the original Instagram reel, the frame is identical: the same soldier kneeling with his rifle raised, the same rock face and the same gravel track. The viral copy is darker and lower in quality, and a black caption band with the “fire exchanges” text has been laid over the lower part of the picture.
The uniforms carry Kazakh special forces patches
In the opening seconds of the original reel, the soldiers’ chest panels carry the patch “АОК-ССО.” The Instagram caption itself names the Special Operations Forces of Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Defence. АОК-ССО stands for the Special Operations Forces (ССО) of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Kazakhstan, combining the Kazakh abbreviation АОК (Арнайы операциялар күштері) and the Russian abbreviation ССО (Силы специальных операций)
How the clip turned into a “fire exchange”
On X, the clip was posted on 25 October 2026 at 4:19 pm Sri Lanka time by an Arabic-language military news account; the frames we saw on that post carry no English text. About three hours later, a Facebook page named “War Threats” posted the 15-second version with the English “fire exchanges” caption and the “@war_threats” watermark, and that version was copied on Facebook, TikTok, and X. The Sri Lankan post of 26 October uses the same watermarked version.
The face-offs are real; an exchange of fire is not reported
The background in the Tamil caption is accurate. ITBP chief Shatrujeet Kapur said at a force ceremony that face-offs had taken place at different locations in Arunachal Pradesh and were still continuing, and he praised the Shaurya commando teams, as reported here. India’s External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said the situation in the border areas gets disturbed when Chinese forces diverge from established patrolling patterns, as reported here.
China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said on 26 October 2026 that China strictly abides by the agreements reached with India, carries out normal border patrols and communicates with India through diplomatic and military channels, here Chinese Foreign Ministry.
None of these statements, and none of the news reports we checked up to 29 October 2026, mentions an exchange of fire. A face-off is a stand-off between patrols; it is not the same as firing. On 26 October, the Indian Army’s own fact-check account also flagged a separate viral clip as false and urged users to verify the location, original footage, and official context before sharing, as reported here.
Why Sri Lankan readers should be careful with India-China border clips
Sri Lanka balances its ties with both neighbours. In New Delhi in December 2024, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake told Prime Minister Narendra Modi that Sri Lanka would not allow its land to be used against India’s interests, as reported here. Claims of a war between India and China therefore travel quickly in Sri Lankan Sinhala, Tamil, and English spaces.
The Sri Lankan post shows the common pattern: an accurate news summary in the caption, joined to unrelated footage and a stronger on-screen claim.
Before sharing, check who first posted the video, when, and whether the uniforms, terrain and language match the story.
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Conclusion:
The video shared as Indian and Chinese troops exchanging fire in Arunachal Pradesh shows a Kazakhstan special forces training drill at the Koktal range in Zharkent, first posted on Instagram by the Federation of Tactical Training on 28 July 2026, months before the October face-offs. The viral frames matches the original frames, and the uniforms carry Kazakh “АОК-ССО” patches.
India’s ITBP chief has confirmed continuing face-offs in Arunachal Pradesh, but neither India’s External Affairs Ministry, China’s Foreign Ministry nor the news reports we checked mention an exchange of fire. The claim is therefore false.
