A video clip purportedly depicting a flooded river bridge in Nepal has garnered widespread attention on social media platforms.
However, a comprehensive fact-check conducted by Nepal Check has found that the video actually shows a flood that occurred in Swat Valley, located in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan, over a year ago.
On August 13, 2023, a Facebook page named Nepal Icons posted a video featuring a bridge engulfed by surging floodwaters.
The post was accompanied by hashtags such as #Kathmandu, #Mayor, and #BalenShah.
The video displayed floodwaters submerging the concrete bridge, with a few people perilously traversing it.
The audio accompanying the viral video has frightened cries, followed by an anchor’s voice offering a vague reference to an incident.
The post on Nepal Icons Facebook page garnered 5,500 likes, and several Facebook users commented, asserting that the video did not originate in Nepal.
The video subsequently gained traction on TikTok and YouTube, with users reiterating the claim. For instance, TikTok user Dinesh Chaudhary uploaded the video with the caption “Flood in Nepal today,” and a YouTube account called “Pure Nepali” shared the same video a year earlier.
Fact-check
Nepal Check’s fact-checking process entailed downloading the video and conducting a reverse image search on Google.
This led the Nepal Check team to multiple sources that identified the video as depicting a flood scene in Swat Valley, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in northwest Pakistan.
To provide more context for the video, it delved deeper into the source and the exact date of the incident.
Numerous users mentioned Madyan as the location of the flood. The Nepal Check team refined its search parameters, using keywords such as “Madyan,” “bridge,” “floods,” and “Swat.”
The investigation led the team to the official website of Samaa Television in Pakistan.
On August 27, 2022, the news outlet published a report detailing the devastating impact of the floods in the Swat Valley, including the damage sustained by the bridge in Madyan and the floods on the Bahrain River.
In the news report, a Samaa TV correspondent reported from near the bridge, providing an on-the-ground account of the flood’s aftermath.
Scrutinizing the video footage closely, the Nepal Check ascertained the video indeed showed the bridge over the Swat River in Madyan, a popular tourist town in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
These critical pieces of evidence led the team to the conclusion that the video captured the flooding on a bridge in the Swat Valley of Pakistan over a year ago.
This particular flood incident had also received coverage from international media outlets such as Business Insider and BuzzFeed.
In light of the evidence and thorough verification process, Nepal Check has established that the video in question does not depict recent floods in Nepal. The claim circulating on social media is therefore false.
Source: https://nepalcheck.org/2023/09/14
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