Old video of excavator truck accident shared in misleading posts about 2022 Pakistan blizzard

This article is more than one year old.
Published on January 19, 2022 at 04:31
2 min read
By AFP Pakistan

Social media posts circulating in Pakistan in January 2022 have shared a video showing an excavator truck falling into a snow-filled ravine after attempting to pull out an SUV. Some posts suggest the footage was filmed during a recent deadly blizzard in Pakistan's mountain resort town of Murree. This is misleading: the video has circulated online since at least 2020.

The video was posted here on Facebook on January 9, 2022.

It has been viewed more than 4,700 times.

The post's Urdu-language caption translates to English as: "During the rescue operation in Murree, a truck and its driver fell into a ravine."

The post includes the hashtag #MurreeDeaths -- a reference to a blizzard that left 22 people dead in Pakistan's mountain resort town Murree in January 2022. AFP reported on the blizzard here.

Screenshot of the misleading post. Captured January 14, 2022.

The video was also shared alongside a similar claim on Facebook here, here and here.

But the video has been shared in a misleading context; it has circulated online since at least January 2020 in reports about an accident in Murree.

A reverse image search found a longer version of the video posted here on January 7, 2020 by UK-based video licensing agency Newsflare.

The video's title reads: "Excavator tumbles from roadside edge while attempting to rescue car after snowfall brings dangerous conditions in Pakistan."

Below is a screenshot comparison of scenes from the video in the misleading posts (L) and the video from Newsflare (R):

Screenshot comparison

AFP reported here on the deadly winter storms that hit Pakistan in January 2020.

A shorter version of the same video was uploaded to YouTube here on March 19, 2020.

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