Iranian TV footage showing sniper killing six Isis fighters turns out to be clip from Medal of Honour video game

The combat footage was actually a clip from the 2010 Medal of Honour videogame

A clip from the video claims to show Isis fighters in a Lebanese sniper's crosshairs

A video shown on Iranian state TV which claimed to show a Hezbollah sniper killing Isis fighters is actually footage from the 2010 video game Medal of Honour, it has been revealed.

The video, which provides a sniper's-eye-view of the encounter, was reportedly shown widely on news programmes in Iran and Saudi Arabia, and circulated online with titles like 'Hezbollah sniper kills six Isis combatants in two minutes'.

Filmed through a thermal scope, the graphic footage shows the 'Isis fighters' being blown to bits by high-calibre rounds, while Arabic is spoken in the background.

Adding colour to their reporting, the Mizan News press agency even said the sniper was using an Arash rifle, a heavy-duty Iranian-made firearm designed to be used against armoured vehicles and helicopters.

However, it has emerged that rather than being gritty combat footage, the video is actually a sequence from Medal of Honour, a 2010 first-person shooter game set in Afghanistan.

As France24 reports, there's a few giveaways that the footage is from the game - when the sniper shoots one of the combatants, a small icon appears in bottom of the screen. This icon is a headshot indicator, a symbol that appears throughout the game whenever the player shoots an enemy in the head.

There's also a few sets of letters that appear in the bottom of the sniper scope which are exactly the same as those which feature in the game. In fact, the whole sequence appears to be lifted from a gameplay video posted on YouTube.

A few of the Iranian websites which published the erroneous story have since deleted their articles, but the footage is still being described as genuine on other news sites and on social media.