Years-old Sri Lankan navy rescue footage misleads online
- Published on December 10, 2025 at 09:39
- 2 min read
- By Harshana SILVA, AFP Sri Lanka
Cyclone Ditwah brought record rainfall to Sri Lanka late 2025, triggering floods and landslides that killed more than 600 people, but a clip circulating online does not show elephants pulled to safety during the storm. The clip was in fact filmed in 2017.
"The operation in which our navy personnel rescued two elephants swept into the sea by heavy rains," reads the Sinhala-language caption of a Facebook video shared on November 29, 2025.
The clip -- which has accumulated over 539,000 views and more than 2,800 shares -- shows a boat near two elephants in the sea barely visible with their trunks and heads above the surface, and ends with both animals wading through shallow waters as they walk ashore.
Text superimposed on the video largely repeats the caption.
The clip circulated after floods and landslides triggered by Cyclone Ditwah killed at least 638 people in one of the worst natural disasters to hit Sri Lanka in two decades, with over two million affected by the record rainfall (archived links).
Comments from users suggest that they believed the video was recent, with one thanking the military and the police "who equally assist the entire Sri Lankan population and animals".
"Where are the NPP liars now? Anura's curse hit Sri Lanka big time, 76 years of curse to Sri Lanka. Sinhalese must think," another wrote -- referring to President Anura Kumara Dissanayake and his National People's Power government.
The claim has spread elsewhere on Facebook and YouTube, but a keyword search on Google found a clip showing the same scene published on Indian outlet The Hindu's YouTube channel on July 24, 2017 (archived link).
"Sri Lankan navy rescues two elephants washed out to sea," its title reads, with a caption saying it shows two young elephants being pulled to safety in June that year.
The country's navy also published an extended version of the video on July 23, 2017 on its official YouTube account with different shots of rescuers guiding and pushing the elephants towards the shore (archived link).
The clip in the misleading post matches the 3:44 mark of the video from the Sri Lankan navy.
It was the second such incident off the island in a span of a few weeks at the time, after Sri Lanka's navy rescued another elephant days prior (archived link).
Officials believe the animals were swept outwards into the sea while crossing the coast's shallow lagoons.
AFP has previously debunked another false claim related to Cyclone Ditwah.
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