Fact Check: In viral video, man dangling from helicopter was fixing flag in Kandahar, says report  

A day after a video of a man dangling from a US Blackhawk helicopter in Kandahar went viral on social media, several theories have come up.   

Some say the man was hanged, some say the person was alive and some claim he was trying to fix the flag. Let’s try to ascertain the reality.   

It went viral as soon as it was posted by the now-deleted account of Talib Times, claimed by the Taliban as their official handle.

While slamming Joe Biden's 'Afghanistan catastrophe', Republican senator Ted Cruz has shared the video. He claimed the Taliban hanged a man from an American Blackhawk helicopter.  

According to the reports, the video surfaced on Monday just after the US troops left the country. It went viral as the Taliban are not believed to have trained pilots and a man was also seen 'hanging' from the helicopter.  

And any new development from Afghanistan is also creating an uproar in social media lately due to the abrupt catastrophic US troops pullout from the country.

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Some social media accounts seem to have claimed it was not what it looked like. According to them, the man seen dangling from the helicopter was actually a Taliban fighter, who was trying to install a Taliban flag from the air.  

The Blackhawk helicopter was also being flown by an Afghan pilot, who was trained in the United States or the United Arab Emirates and not a Taliban.  

The same video was also posted by Asvaka news agency, which claimed the Black Hawk was seen over the Kandahar governor office. The reports claimed the man was actually trying to install a flag on the governor's office, from the air, which did not work at the end.

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According to the Reuters Factcheck, a closer shot of the video shows that the "man is alive, despite the contrary claims".  

So, finally, Ted Cruz deleted the earlier tweet and wrote, "It turns out the post I shared w/ a video of Taliban “hanging a man” from a helicopter may be inaccurate. So I deleted the tweet. What remains accurate is: The Taliban are brutal terrorists. We left them millions in US military equipment, including Black Hawk helicopters."  

(With inputs from agencies)