Media Outlets Falsely Share Old Video From Indonesia as Bridge Collapse in Assam
The video is from 2021 when an old bridge had collapsed in Indonesia following flash floods.
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As Assam and parts of the northeast continue to receive incessant rainfall, a video of a bridge collapse is being massively shared on social media to claim that the visuals are from flood-hit Assam, where at least seven people have lost their lives so far.
These visuals were even aired by several news organisations, including Hindi news channel Aaj Tak, English Channel NDTV, TV9, Asianet News, and Odisha TV, as well as news portals News NCR.
We found that the video is from Indonesia and was reported in 2021. According to media reports, due to flash floods, an old bridge had collapsed in East Sumba Regency at East Nusa Tenggara Province of Indonesia.
CLAIM
Most of the news organisations that shared the visuals wrote that the "video shows an iron bridge that collapsed in Assam due to the flood."
The video was also shared by news platform, Editorji. However, they mentioned that the video was "unverified."
An archive of the post can be seen here.
An archive of the video can be seen here.
An archive of the story can be seen here.
An archive of the story can be seen here.
An archive of the tweet can be seen here.
An archive of the story can be seen here.
An archive of the story can be seen here.
WHAT WE FOUND
With the help of InVid, a video verification tool, we extracted several keyframes from the video and conducted a reverse image search on some of them.
A Google reverse image search led us to a YouTube video on the channel of an Indonesia-based media organisation Tribun News.
The video was posted on 5 April 2021 and the title in Indonesian translated to 'Video shows old bridge of Kambaniru, East Sumba, collapsed due to flash floods'.
Screengrab from Tribun News.
(Photo: Altered by The Quint)
The description of the video read that the Ahmad Yani bridge, locally known as the old Kambaniru Bridge in East Sumba Regency in East Nusa Tenggara Province of Indonesia had collapsed due to flash floods.
The story was also published by other Indonesia-based media outlets namely 'Tribun News Wiki.com', 'Suarajogja', 'Sukabumi Update' and 'Indo Zone' in April 2021.
According to Tribun News Wiki, a government official, Andreas Mulla, said that the old bridge had collapsed due to flooding in Kambaniru river.
In April 2021, flash floods and landslides that had swept an island in Indonesia’s easternmost province that took the lives of 44 people, Al Jazeera had reported.
Clearly, an old video from Indonesia is being shared with the false claim that it shows a bridge collapse in Assam due to floods.
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