ABC News apparently mistook video of machine gun fire on a Kentucky gun range for the Turkish attack on Syria
- Video footage of a purported "bombing of Kurd civilians" by Turkish military forces shown on ABC News appeared to be a nighttime firing of tracer rounds at a Kentucky gun range.
- The footage purported to show the "fury of the Turkish attack" on the Turkey-Syria border, where Turkish forces are indeed attacking the once US-backed Kurdish militia.
- ABC News said it regretted the error on Monday and took down the video segment.
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Video footage of a purported "bombing of Kurd civilians" by Turkish military forces shown on ABC News appeared to be a nighttime firing of tracer rounds at a Kentucky gun range.
The footage purported to show the "fury of the Turkish attack" on the Turkey-Syria border, where Turkish forces are indeed attacking the once US-backed Kurdish militia.
"This video, right here, appearing to show Turkey's military bombing Kurd civilians in a Syrian border town," ABC anchor Tom Llamas said in the broadcast.
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Similar footage from the Knob Creek Gun Range's biannual 2017 machine gun shoot came to light on Monday after ABC News's broadcast. The original footage showed tracer rounds being fired by automatic weapons amid explosions, as a group of people filmed the tracer rounds on their cell phones.
The onlookers from the original video were not pictured in the broadcast.
A spokesman for the Knob Creek Gun Range said that ABC News's footage initially appears to be of the gun shoot.
"As of right now," the spokesperson said to The Washington Examiner, "it seems to be our footage."
Insider's calls to Knob Creek Gun Range were not answered on Monday.
ABC News said it regretted the error on Monday and took down the video segment.
"We've taken down video that aired on 'World News Tonight' Sunday and 'Good Morning America' this morning that appeared to be from the Syrian border immediately after questions were raised about its accuracy," the network said in a statement. "ABC News regrets the error."
Turkish troops have deployed to northeast Syria following President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw troops from the area last week. Turkey has long cited the Kurdish People's Protection Units, or YPG, and the majority-Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces as terrorist threats. Numerous Kurdish forces and civilians, who were once backed by the US for their campaign against ISIS, have died in the campaign.