This post on Facebook with an image purportedly of Saudi Arabia deploying special forces to Yemen in January 2026 is MISSING CONTEXT.
The post reads, “Saudi Arabia sending additional military and special forces to Yemen after the request of the Yemeni president to defend their country and security from the UAE and Israel.”
However, Google reverse image search results established that the image has been online since 2015.
The image is a still taken from a video published by Al Arabiya on 11 May 2015, accompanied by the Arabic headline: ‘Exclusively on Al Arabiya: The arrival of the strike force.’”
The video was also published on this YouTube channel on 11 May 2015.
On 30 December 2025, the media reported that Saudi Arabia provided military support to the Presidential Leadership Council amid clashes with the UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council.
A Google keyword search shows that Saudi-backed forces were deployed to Aden, Yemen in early January 2026.
PesaCheck has examined a post on Facebook with an image supposedly of Saudi Arabia deploying special forces to Yemen in January 2026 and finds it to be MISSING CONTEXT.
This post is part of an ongoing series of PesaCheck fact-checks examining content marked as potential misinformation on Facebook and other social media platforms.
By partnering with Facebook and similar social media platforms, third-party fact-checking organisations like PesaCheck are helping to sort fact from fiction. We do this by giving the public deeper insight and context to posts they see in their social media feeds.
Have you spotted what you think is fake news or false information on Facebook? Here’s how you can report. And, here’s more information on PesaCheck’s methodology for fact-checking questionable content.
This fact-check was written by PesaCheck fact-checker Bekalu Kibro and edited by PesaCheck senior copy editor Mary Mutisya and chief copy editor Stephen Ndegwa.
The article was approved for publication by PesaCheck’s managing editor Doreen Wainainah.
PesaCheck is East Africa’s first public finance fact-checking initiative. It was co-founded by Catherine Gicheru and Justin Arenstein, and is being incubated by the continent’s largest civic technology and data journalism accelerator: Code for Africa. It seeks to help the public separate fact from fiction in public pronouncements about the numbers that shape our world, with a special emphasis on pronouncements about public finances that shape government’s delivery of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) public services, such as healthcare, rural development and access to water/ sanitation. PesaCheck also tests the accuracy of media reportage. To find out more about the project, visit pesacheck.org.
PesaCheck is an initiative of Code for Africa, through its innovateAFRICA fund, with support from Deutsche Welle Akademie, in partnership with a coalition of local African media and other civic watchdog organisations.
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