Social media users have falsely claimed footage of children dancing in a vehicle was taken before a devastating fire on a school bus in Thailand killed 20 children and three teachers in October. In fact, the video was taken weeks before the tragedy and shows students from a different school from the country’s south.
“Thai teachers and students just before the bus fire,” reads superimposed Burmese-language text on a TikTok video shared on October 3, 2024, where it racked up more than 499,000 views.
The 49-second clip shows school children in purple uniforms dancing on a bus aisle, with adults seated either side.
The post surfaced two days after a school bus caught fire on a highway near Thailand’s capital Bangkok, killing 23 people in what is thought to be the kingdom’s deadliest road accident in a decade (archived link).
The same clip has circulated on social media alongside similar claims in several languages, including Burmese, Thai and English.
But keyword searches found the original video was first shared online four days before the bus fire on October 1.
AFP found the same video published on TikTok on September 26, 2024, alongside Thai-language captions that read: “September 13, 2024, students of Ban Thung Kwan Kaew School, Nakhon Si Thammarat province, on a field trip in Songkhla province” (archived link).
Below is a screenshot comparison of the video shared in the false posts (left) and the original TikTok video (right):
The TikTok user, Kanchana Chimthab, told AFP she is a parent of one of the students seen in the video and that she filmed the clip on September 13 during a field trip to Thailand’s southern Songkhla province.
“The clip is not related to the bus fire,” she said.
Keyword searches on Facebook also led to a press release posted on the school’s Facebook page which featured photos from the field trip, showing students wearing the purple uniforms seen in the video (archived link).
Part of the press release says, “[Teachers of Ban Thung Kwan Kaew School] took students and parents on a field trip to Songkhla province, visiting places like Songkhla Zoo, Samila Beach and Wat Laem Pho … on September 13, 2024.”
The children killed in the bus fire were from Wat Khao Phraya Sangkharam School in the northern province of Uthai Thani, which has orange uniforms (archived link).
AFP previously debunked misinformation related to the school bus fire in Thailand here.
