An previous video of a lethal practice fireplace has been seen tons of of 1000’s of occasions after it was shared on-line in false posts claiming it reveals a fireplace that supposedly killed 5 individuals in central Pakistan in February 2025. The video has in actual fact circulated in studies a couple of blaze onboard a crowded practice which killed 74 individuals in October 2019.
The video, displaying a number of practice carriages engulfed in flames, was seen greater than 123,000 occasions after it was posted on Fb on February 9, 2025.
Its Urdu-language caption learn partly: “Breaking Information. 5 individuals had been killed and several other others wounded after a Tezgam practice caught fireplace close to Liaqatpur Tanwari station.”
“Based on sources, the practice was going from Karachi to Lahore.”
The Tezgam, one among Pakistan’s oldest and hottest rail providers, runs between the southern port metropolis of Karachi to the garrison metropolis of Rawalpindi, neighbouring Islamabad. The city of Liaqatpur is alongside the practice route, in central Pakistan (archived hyperlink) .
Screenshot of the false Fb put up, captured on February 11, 2025
The identical video was shared elsewhere on Fb and X in posts that additionally claimed it confirmed a fireplace that broke out aboard a practice in February 2025.
“So unhappy,” learn a touch upon one of many posts.
One other mentioned: “Could Allah have mercy. How come all of the carriages out of the blue caught fireplace?”
However an official with the Liaqatpur police and a Pakistan Railways spokesperson each instructed AFP there have been no latest practice fireplace incidents.
“No fireplace incident in any practice passed off within the final yr,” Pakistan Railways spokesman Babar Ali Raza mentioned on February 17, including that the video really reveals a fireplace that occurred in 2019.
A reverse picture search on Google utilizing keyframes from the falsely shared video led to a report a couple of fireplace that ripped by a Tezgam Categorical practice in October 2019, killing 74 individuals (archived hyperlink).
Based on officers, the fireplace began when gasoline cylinders utilized by some passengers to prepare dinner breakfast exploded, sending flames racing by three carriages because the practice handed close to Rahim Yar Khan, in Punjab province.
Fuel cylinders are supposedly banned on trains, and Pakistan’s then-railways minister Sheikh Rasheed Ahmed mentioned it had been a “mistake” to permit them on board.
The footage circulating on social media was shared on the time in information shops, together with in X posts by BBC Urdu and 92 Information on October 31 and November 1, 2019 (archived right here and right here).
Screenshots comparability of the falsely shared video (left) and the BBC Urdu video (proper)
