Footage of a year-old Pakistan train fire misrepresented as “February 2025”
An old video of a deadly train fire has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times after it shared online in a fake post claiming it was a fire that killed five people in central Pakistan in February 2025. A crowded train on board killed 74 people in October 2019.
The video shows several flame-engued train carriages viewed over 123,000 times after being posted on Facebook on February 9, 2025.
Its Urdu language title section reads: “Breaking news. Five people were killed and several other injured trains were caught Fire near Liaqatpur Tanwari Station. ”
“According to sources, the train goes from Karachi to Lahore.”
Tezgam is one of Pakistan's oldest and most popular railway services, between the southern port city of Karachi and the garrison city of Rawalpindi, adjacent to Islamabad. Likatpur town follows train route in central Pakistan (Archive link).
Screenshot of False Facebook post, captured on February 11, 2025
The same video is shared elsewhere on Facebook and X Claims it shows a fire that broke out on the train February 2025.
“It's sad,” read a comment on one of the articles.
Another said, “Allah would have mercy. How did all the carriages suddenly catch fire?”
but Liaqatpur police officers Pakistan Railway spokespersons told AFP that no train fires have occurred recently.
“No train incidents occurred last year,” Pakistan Railway spokesman Babar Ali Raza said on February 17. The video actually shows the fire that took place in 2019.
Reverse image search on Google using keyframes of wrongly shared videos. A report on a fire torn through the Tezgam Express train in October 2019 kills 74 people (Archive link).
According to officials, the fire began with the explosion of a gas cylinder used by some passengers to cook breakfast, and the flames passed through three carriages near Rahim Yar Khan in Punjab province.
It is said that gas cylinders were banned on trains, and Pakistan's then runway minister Sheikh Rasheed Ahmed said it was a “mistake” to get them on board.
At that time, videos circulating on social media were shared in news media, including in X's posts BBC Urdu and 92 news on October 31 and November 1, 2019 (archived here and here).
Screenshot comparison of error sharing video (left) and BBC Urdu video (right)
