Old footage falsely linked to Tajikistan earthquake

"There was a 7.1-magnitude earthquake in the China-Tajikistan border area," reads a Bengali-language Facebook post on February 23.

The post shows a video of objects falling off shelves in a room as it shakes dramatically.

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Screenshot of the false post, taken March 30, 2023

A 6.8-magnitude earthquake hit in the east of mountainous ex-Soviet Tajikistan on February 23, without producing victims or damage, officials said.

The quake's epicentre appeared to be in the sparsely populated Gorno-Badakhshan, a semi-autonomous eastern region that borders Afghanistan and China.

A 5.0-magnitude aftershock hit the area about 20 minutes after the initial quake, followed by a 4.6-magnitude quake.

The video was shared in posts in various languages falsely linking it to the Tajikistan quake, including in English, French and Arabic, and in posts from countries including Bangladesh, India and Pakistan.

Japan quake

Reverse image searches on Google found the video in a tweet from February 2021 about an earthquake in Japan.

"The earthquake was huge and for some reason I reflexively took a video," reads the Japanese-language tweet posted on February 13, 2021 by an account called @himei42.

That day, a 7.3-magnitude earthquake struck off Fukushima in eastern Japan, injuring more than 100 people.

The quake hit nearly a decade after the region suffered a devastating quake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown -- although no abnormalities were observed at the striken Fukushima nuclear plant.

Below is a screenshot comparison of the clip in false posts (left) and shared on Twitter in 2021 (right):

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Screenshot comparison of the clip in false posts (left) and shared on Twitter in 2021 (right)

Various media outlets published the tweet in reports about the Fukushima quake, including Turkish state broadcaster TRT World Now and US-based The Weather Channel.