These are old photos showing various different disasters

This article is more than one year old.
Published on November 17, 2021 at 02:47
3 min read
By Mohammad MAZED, AFP Bangladesh

Facebook posts circulating in Bangladesh share photos that they claim show a road accident in which five police officers were purportedly killed and 25 others were injured. The claim is false; the photos were taken at the scene of various different disasters. AFP found no credible reports of such an accident taking place in November 2021.

The photos were shared here on Facebook on November 9.

"Today 25 police officers were injured and five died in a road accident in Brahmanbaria, where police previously martyred nine Hefazat activists," the caption reads.

Brahmanbaria is an eastern district of Bangladesh where at least five people were killed when Islamist group Hefazat-e-Islam clashed with law enforcement agencies in March, during violent demonstrations over Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's tour to the capital Dhaka.

The pictures show a police van smashed into a sign post, a man receiving medical treatment and body bags lined up in the street.

Screenshot of a Facebook post sharing the false claim, taken on November 14, 2021

The same pictures were shared in similar Facebook posts here and here.

However, the claim is false.

Smashed police van

Reverse image searches on Google found that the photo of the police van was published in reports from 2019 about a crash in Dhaka.

The photo appeared in Bangladeshi news outlet The Business Standard in a report on November 8, 2019, headlined: “Three, including policeman, injured in Dhaka road crash.”

Below is a screenshot comparison of the image in the misleading Facebook post (left) and the image published by The Business Standard (right):

Screenshot comparison of the image in the misleading Facebook post (left) and the image published by The Business Standard (right)

Man receiving medical help

The image of a man receiving medical treatment was taken from reports of a road crash in Brahmanbaria in April.

Bangladesh-based Facebook page "Borno TV" shared a video which features the image in a post on April 5. According to the caption, it showed the aftermath of a bus collision in which 21 policemen were seriously injured.

According to a report by Bangladeshi newspaper Dhaka Tribune from April 5, at least 21 policemen were injured in a crash between a bus and two vans in Brahmanbaria on that date.

Below is a screenshot comparison of the image in the misleading Facebook post (left) and the video posted by Borno TV (right):

Screenshot comparison of the image in the misleading Facebook post (left) and the video posted by Borno TV (right)

Body bags

A reverse image search on Yandex found the photo of body bags published on March 26 in a news report about a bus crash in Rajshahi, in western Bangladesh.

According to the report, 17 people from four families were killed in the crash.

Below is a screenshot comparison of the image in the misleading Facebook post (left) and the image published with the news report (right):

Screenshot comparison of the image in the misleading Facebook post (left) and the image published with the news report (right):

AFP found no credible reports of an accident involving five police officers killed and 25 injured in Brahmanbaria in November 2021.

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