This video shows fire at a gas canister store in Vietnam — not Malaysia
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on September 22, 2021 at 10:36
- 2 min read
- By AFP Singapore
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The video was posted on Facebook here on August 27, 2021.
The post's caption states: “Today a fire broke out in a Chinese shop in Malaysia and then slowly the gas cylinders started exploding one by one and at one stage became huge”.
The same video was shared alongside a similar claim here in English. It also garnered more than 1.2 million views after it was posted alongside a similar claim in Bengali here.
The claim, however, is false.
A reverse image search on Google found the video appeared in this report on August 11, 2021 by Vietnam Net, a Vietnamese news outlet.
The headline reads: "Gas canister store in Lao Cai catches fire, causing explosions".
According to the report, a gas canister store at Sa Pa, a town in Lao Cai province, in northwestern Vietnam, caught fire on the morning of August 11, 2021.
Below is a screenshot comparison of the video in the misleading post (L) and the video in Vietnam Net's report (R):
Video licensing agency Newsflare published this video, which shows the same fire taken from a different angle.
It also states the video was taken in Sa Pa on August 11, 2021.
The report's first paragraph reads: "A large explosion from a shop selling gas canisters destroyed at least two buildings in Lao Cai, Vietnam on Wednesday (August 11)."
The fire was also reported on August 12, 2021, by Tuoi Tre News, an English-language Vietnamese news site.
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