This video shows a deadly truck blast in Italy in 2018

This article is more than one year old.
Published on June 17, 2020 at 08:45
2 min read
By AFP Hong Kong

Footage of a truck exploding on a highway has been viewed tens of thousands of times in multiple posts on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube in June 2020 alongside claims that the blast occurred in the Chinese city of Wenling. The claim is false; the video actually shows an incident in Italy in August 2018.

The 23-second video was published here on Twitter on June 13. It has been viewed more than 20,000 times.

The post's traditional Chinese-language caption translates to English as: “Breaking: Tanker truck explosion on highway in Daxi, Wenling, Zhejiang!”

A screenshot taken on June 16, 2020, of the misleading post published by Twitter user @9aQY5dxp0btaRXe

The video was shared alongside similar claims on Facebook here and here; on Twitter here and here; and on YouTube here and here.

A tanker truck did explode on a highway in Wenling on June 13, killing at least 19 people and injuring over 170, as AFP reported here.

However, the claim about the footage is false.

Reverse image and keyword searches found that the video in fact shows an accident that occured in Italy in 2018.

Similar footage was published on Twitter here on August 7, 2018, by Polizia di Stato, one of the national police forces of Italy. In the tweet, the police reported that the accident involved a vehicle that was "transporting flammable substances."

The footage in the misleading post corresponds to the Twitter video between the 11- and 34-second marks.

#bologna #BorgoPanigale Le immagini della dinamica del grave incidente che ha coinvolto anche un mezzo che trasportava sostanze infiammabili. Indagini in corso #PoliziaStradale pic.twitter.com/aS8NKxTaoA
— Polizia di Stato (@poliziadistato) August 6, 2018

Below are screenshot comparisons of the video in the misleading post (L) and the footage from Polizia di Stato (R):

Screenshot comparison of the video in the misleading post (L) and the footage from Polizia di Stato (R)

The accident was widely reported on by international and Italian media; for example here and here by Italian newspapers Corriere della Sera and La Provincia di Lecco.

AFP also published the police video along with other footage from the blast here.

The stretch of highway where the accident occured, which is just outside the northern Italian city of Bologna, can be seen here on Google Street View.

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