Ugandan troops were deployed to neighbouring South Sudan in March 2025 amid renewed hostility between supporters of the country’s two main leaders. Following their arrival, a post shared on TikTok claimed to show the mass burial of Ugandan soldiers killed in South Sudan. This is false; the video shows the burial of Zambian sugar company workers who drowned in a boat accident on March 24, 2025. Uganda’s army also denied the claim.
“UPDF soldiers killed in South Sudan. It’s a shame and painful thing to die in a war that doesn’t concern you,” reads the text overlay on a TikTok video published on April 1, 2025.
Screenshot of the false post, taken April 14, 2025
UPDF stands for Uganda People’s Defence Force.
In the video, onlookers watch as individuals dressed in combat uniforms carry coffins to place them in graves. Wailing and shouting can be heard in the background.
The post was published by an account named “cleverkiss”. A review of the account, which has more than 5,000 followers, reveals it predominantly shares content about South Sudan’s politics and its internal war.
The same claim was shared here on X with an image of soldiers standing behind an aircraft with coffins covered with the Ugandan flag on the ground between them.
“Over 500 UPDF soldiers were killed in South Sudan after their reckless deployment. No one anywhere will report about this!” reads the post published on March 27, 2025. It has been shared more than 200 times.
Screenshot showing false X post, taken April 14, 2025
Another post with both the burial video and the image of the draped coffins appeared here on TikTok.
South Sudan crisis
The latest bout of violence in South Sudan, triggered by long-standing ethnic tensions and political power struggles between President Salva Kiir and First Vice President Riek Machar, poses a threat to a 2018 peace deal (archived here and here).
Uganda, which has in the past been involved in South Sudan’s conflict, deployed its troops in March 2025 to support Kiir, an ally of Museveni (archived here).
Machar’s Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-in-Opposition (SPLM-IO) party condemned Uganda’s intervention, saying that by conducting airstrikes and sending in armoured units they were violating a UN arms embargo.
Late last month the Ugandan army denied using chemical weapons in South Sudan, dismissing the claims as AI-generated propaganda by Machar and his allies (archived here).
The video claiming to show Ugandan soldiers who died in South Sudan is false.
Unrelated events
Using Google Lens to conduct reverse image searches on the video keyframes, AFP Fact Check found a Facebook video published on March 27, 2025, by Zambian government-owned broadcast station, ZNBC (archived here).
The video’s title reads: “Burial of the Kawambwa Sugar Employees who drowned takes place Ten Drowned (sic).”
Although the ZNBC footage is not identical to the false TikTok clip, they show the same event: the graves, the white grave markers, the coffins and the uniforms worn by the pallbearers are common in both videos.
Screenshots showing comparisons between the TikTok video (top and bottom left) and the ZNBC footage
According to ZNBC, the ceremony marked the tragic deaths of sugar company employees who drowned in the Lwena River on their way to work on March 24, 2025.
Other Zambian news outlets reported on the incident (archived here and here).
In an address published on April 1, 2025, by the Uganda Broadcasting Corporation (UBC), the UPDF denied hundreds of their soldiers were killed in South Sudan (archived here).
“That information is a total fabrication. It is fake news,” said UPDF’s acting spokesperson, Chris Magezi.
AFP Fact Check also carried out a reverse image search on the picture of the coffins draped in Ugandan flags.
The original photo by AFP was taken in August 2005 at the Entebbe Air Base in Uganda (archive here).
Screenshot of the image on AFP archive, taken April 14, 2025
The caption describes UPDF soldiers standing in front of coffins carrying the bodies of the Ugandan presidential helicopter crew who perished along with the late Sudanese vice president John Garang in a 2005 helicopter crash near the Sudan-Uganda border (archived here).
AFP Fact Check has previously debunked claims about Ugandan troops in South Sudan here.