An previous video of a lethal prepare hearth has been considered lots of of 1000’s of instances after it was shared on-line in false posts claiming it reveals a hearth that supposedly killed 5 folks in central Pakistan in February 2025. The video has in reality circulated in experiences a couple of blaze onboard a crowded prepare which killed 74 folks in October 2019.
The video, exhibiting a number of prepare carriages engulfed in flames, was considered greater than 123,000 instances after it was posted on Facebook on February 9, 2025.
Its Urdu-language caption learn partly: “Breaking Information. 5 folks have been killed and a number of other others wounded after a Tezgam prepare caught hearth close to Liaqatpur Tanwari station.”
“Based on sources, the prepare was going from Karachi to Lahore.”
The Tezgam, one in all Pakistan’s oldest and hottest rail providers, runs between the southern port metropolis of Karachi to the garrison metropolis of Rawalpindi, neighbouring Islamabad. The city of Liaqatpur is alongside the prepare route, in central Pakistan (archived link) .
Screenshot of the false Fb submit, captured on February 11, 2025
The identical video was shared elsewhere on Facebook and X in posts that additionally claimed it confirmed a hearth that broke out aboard a prepare in February 2025.
“So unhappy,” learn a touch upon one of many posts.
One other mentioned: “Could Allah have mercy. How come all of the carriages all of a sudden caught hearth?”
However an official with the Liaqatpur police and a Pakistan Railways spokesperson each advised AFP there have been no latest prepare hearth incidents.
“No hearth incident in any prepare passed off within the final yr,” Pakistan Railways spokesman Babar Ali Raza mentioned on February 17, including that the video really reveals a hearth that occurred in 2019.
A reverse picture search on Google utilizing keyframes from the falsely shared video led to a report a couple of fire that ripped by way of a Tezgam Categorical prepare in October 2019, killing 74 folks (archived link).
Based on officers, the fireplace began when gasoline cylinders utilized by some passengers to prepare dinner breakfast exploded, sending flames racing by way of three carriages because the prepare handed close to Rahim Yar Khan, in Punjab province.
Gasoline cylinders are supposedly banned on trains, and Pakistan’s then-railways minister Sheikh Rasheed Ahmed mentioned it had been a “mistake” to permit them on board.
The footage circulating on social media was shared on the time in information shops, together with in X posts by BBC Urdu and 92 News on October 31 and November 1, 2019 (archived here and here).
Screenshots comparability of the falsely shared video (left) and the BBC Urdu video (proper)
