Mystery of the Matching Machine Guns

Today the Sri Lankan government published an article on their official website (Defence.lk) titled "Army annihilates terror pocket in Anandapuram" wherein they claim to have killed a large number of LTTE fighters and recovered 50 T-56 rifles. There are a few obvious problems about the story that I would like to point out here. The first problem, which is a recurring theme in nearly all of the governments claims, is that they haven't shown any bodies of dead LTTE fighters. They claim to have recovered 31 bodies of LTTE fighters but instead they choose to show this photograph that highlights their day's victory:

We realize an old rusted container is a big accomplishment to highlight, but when they claim to have recovered 31 bodies of LTTE fighters, don't you think that would be more important to show? But we shouldn't criticize them too much, because that isn't all they showed. There was also this:

In case you can't figure out what it is, I will help you out. That's half a boat they recovered. It's basically as shocking and amazing as a full boat, but just divide that by two. Maybe they should have renamed their article to "Army annihilates half a boat and old rusted container in Anandapuram". That would have made it a little more clear for the readers, and would have removed any confusion.

But let us move on to the real point of this article, that is the picture of guns they claimed to have recovered. We already mentioned that they failed to show any pictures of dead LTTE fighters, even though they claimed to have recovered 31 bodies, but at least they showed us the picture of the guns they recovered, right? There is just one problem with the picture. They claimed to have recovered 50 T-56 rifles, but the picture shows over 90 T-56 rifles (you can click the photo for a bigger version):

In fact, there are more than 50 T-56 rifles in the first two rows alone. It was just a few days ago that we caught Army.lk posting a fake photograph of "captured weapons" that had actually been taken a year before. Unfortunately, in this case, the Defence.lk editors were smart enough to erase the exif data that shows the date a picture was taken, so we cannot know when this photo was actually taken, but we can be certain it is a fake because the number of rifles doesn't even come close to matching the story.

There is one more dead give away that shows this photograph is a fake, and I am sure the editors are too stupid to have figured this out. Just look at the model of gun that has been recovered. There are two types of T-56 rifles used by the LTTE. The most common rifle used is the regular T-56 (top of following photo), which has a wooden shoulder support, and the other version is the T-56-1 (bottom of following photo), which has a collapsable shoulder support:

Up till now whenever the security forces have recovered large numbers of T-56 rifles in battles, the majority have been regular T-56 rifles, with a smaller mix of T-56-1 rifles included. But in today's photograph, every single rifle is a T-56-1 model, which is almost impossible based on past experience. How can there be nearly 100 T-56-1 rifles without a single regular T-56 rifle included? The only way that would happen is if the guns were brought out of a storage room - not collected from a battlefield. In the Sri Lankan army's storage rooms they divide the guns based on model. When a soldier was sent to bring guns for this photograph, he foolishly took all the guns from a single pile, which contained the rarer T-56-1 rifles. So rather than being a mix of various guns (as would occur in a real battle), the entire collection of guns were identical - something that is statistically impossible in a real battle.

To give you an idea of what recovered guns should look like, here are several photographs from the government following large battles. Note the mix of guns, with most being regular T-56 rifles with wooden shoulder supports (you can click on the pictures for larger versions):

In literally every single case most of the recovered guns are regular T-56 rifles, but in today's photograph, every single gun is a T-56-1 model, nearly 100 of them. Please look at the original photograph again (see the enlarged version by clicking on the photo, it really highlights this point):

Such an occurence is statistically impossible, and the only way they could have 100 T-56-1 rifles together like this is if they brought them out from a storage room, where the rifles are stacked based on model.

Once again these two points prove the story created by Defence.lk is not true. They claim to have recovered 50 T-56 rifles, yet they show nearly 100 rifles in the photograph. And the fact that every single one of the 100 rifles is the rarer T-56-1 model proves this photograph is set up taking guns from a storage room.