Video shows US coast guard rescue, not deadly boat crash off Libya
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on March 6, 2023 at 09:36
- 3 min read
- By AFP Pakistan
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"28 boys from Gujrat died in a boat crash in Libya," reads an Urdu-language Facebook post shared on February 26.
Gujrat is a city in Pakistan's Punjab province.
The video, which has more than 388,000 views, shows huge waves lashing a boat before it capsizes.
Similar videos circulated on Facebook here, here and here; and on Twitter here, here and here.
The footage surfaced after at least 70 people died when their overcrowded boat shattered in a storm off Italy's southern coast on February 26.
Pakistan's foreign office said two Pakistani nationals were among those killed, and that seven nationals died in a separate shipwreck off the coast of Libya the same day.
The tragedies came days after 73 migrants are thought to have died in a shipwreck off Libya on February 14.
Tens of thousands of migrants and asylum seekers cross the Mediterranean each year hoping to find a new life in Europe.
Some social media users appeared to believe the footage circulating online showed a shipwreck off the coast of Libya.
"And Libyan police are enjoying making their video," one comment read.
"Very sad, may Allah grant them mercy. But why were these people trying to get to Europe illegally?" wrote another user.
US coast guard rescue
A reverse image search on Google using keyframes from the video found similar footage in reports of a rescue operation off the coast of the US state of Oregon.
The videos were embedded in a report by Navy Times published on February 7 and in a BBC News tweet from February 5.
Below is a screenshot comparison of the video in false posts (left) and the BBC News tweet (right):
Navy Times reported that the US coast guard undertook the dramatic rescue on February 3 after a suspected boat thief got into difficulty amid high winds and waves.
BBC News also published an article on the rescue, which credited the footage to the US Coast Guard in the Pacific Northwest.
The coastguard's Twitter account @USCGPacificNW posted the clip in a Twitter thread about the incident.
Below is a screenshot comparison between the video in false posts (left) and the video in the coast guard's tweet (right):
"The surf made rescue by boat dangerous, so the aircrew decided to lower the rescue swimmer and have the owner enter the water for rescue," the coast guard tweeted.
"As he entered the water the vessel capsized but the rescue swimmer was able to safely recover the individual."
The coast guard also posted a longer article about the rescue on its website.
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