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| - Fact Check: None of these viral videos is from the Feb 23 Tajikistan earthquake
This video is from the devastating earthquake that hit Turkey on February 6.
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India Today Fact Check
This video is from the devastating earthquake that hit Turkey on February 6. The video shows volunteers from Tajikistan participating in rescue work.
A series of earthquakes hit a remote region of Tajikistan, near its border with China, on February 23. The strongest of these temblors measured at magnitude 6.8.
Though no casualties or damage had been reported at the time of writing this story, people on social media were swift in sharing videos of alleged rescue operations and damaged buildings in the country. These, however, were all from other parts of the world.
In this article, we will debunk four such videos.
TAJIKS TO THE RESCUE
One such video featured a group of men rescuing a child from the debris of a collapsed building. A few of these men wore green jackets with “Tajikistan” written on the back.
A reverse search of the video’s keyframes led us to the same clip shared by a few Facebook accounts as early as February 12. Per these posts, the video featured a child rescued from the rubble during the earthquake in KahramanmaraŞ, Turkey. The caption to one such video in Albanian reads, “There is still hope! Little Yavuz was rescued from the rubble in Kahramanmaras after 159 hours”. We also found similar videos from the same rescue operation.
Since February 9, a team of rescuers from Tajikistan has carried out search and rescue activities in the Turkish regions that were affected by earthquakes on February 6. Several images and videos of this team are available on social media.
PANIC AT THE AIRPORT
Another video shows people panicking in an airport that was hit by a quake.
With the help of a reverse image search, we found that the video was from Clark International Airport in the Philippines. Several media organisations based in the Philippines shared this video in April 2019.
As per the reports, the video was from an earthquake that hit the country on April 22, 2019. The Department of Transportation in the Philippines also shared this video on its official Facebook account in 2019.
A DEVASTATED NEIGHBOURHOOD
Another video that’s now going viral shows destroyed buildings on a city street. Our investigation using a reverse search of the video’s frames confirmed that the video has been on the internet since as early as February 8. At the time, people shared the clip, claiming it showed a quake-hit street in Turkey’s Hatay province.
A MINE SWEPT!
Another video in circulation shows an avalanche of rock and soil falling from one side of the mountain. The caption to the video shared on Twitter read, “Earthquake in China occupied Tajikistan. Mining collapsed.”
Reverse searching the video’s keyframes, we found it was from a coal mine collapse in northern China’s Inner Mongolia. While China and Tajikistan share a border, Inner Mongolia, an autonomous region of northern China, is on the other side of the country. We also found no news of an earthquake in Inner Mongolia. According to media reports that carried the video, the incident happened on the morning of February 23. Reportedly, Chinese President Xi Jinping has ordered an investigation into the matter.
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