This video has circulated in media reports about a collision in Russia

This article is more than one year old.
Published on July 3, 2020 at 04:00
2 min read
By AFP Thailand

A video of a truck crashing into several vehicles on a highway has been shared repeatedly on Line Messenger and Facebook alongside a claim it shows a traffic accident in Thailand. The claim is false; the video has circulated in reports about a fatal truck crash in Chelyabinsk, a city in west Russia.

The 41-second video was shared on the messaging app Line on June 26, 2020.

Below is a screenshot of the Line message:

The Thai-language message translates to English as: “The route downhill from Pak Thong Chai District No. 304 from Sattaheep to Korat, they are probably dead. Poor them.”

Pak Thong Chai is a district in the south of Nakhon Ratchasima province -- locally known as Korat -- in northeastern Thailand.

The video also features the logo of Ruptly, the Berlin-based video branch of Russia’s state-owned RT television network.

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

The claim, however, is false.

A combined reverse image and keyword search found the same video published here on Ruptly’s official YouTube account, headlined: “*DISTRESSING CONTENT* Russia: Fatal truck crash caught on CCTV in Chelyabinsk”.

A screenshot of the video on Ruptly’s YouTube page, taken on June 30, 2020

Chelyabinsk is a city in west Russia.

Below is a screenshot comparison between the video in the misleading post (L)and the Ruptly video (R):

A screenshot comparison of the video in the misleading posts (L) and the Ruptly video (R)

The video description reads: “Two people were killed and seven injured after a truck ran into five vehicles on the M-5 highway.”

The video was also published in this June 17, 2020 article by the Turkish television channel TGRT Haber, headlined: “Truck crushed 4 vehicles like paper: 2 dead, 7 injured”.

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