The post contains a 10-second video with the logo of News18, an Indian subsidiary of the international news channel CNN.
“The landslide that occurred in Gofa. The death toll has reached 300,” reads Amharic text added to the video.
In the footage, a huge landslide tears down a mountainside. A woman’s voice says in Amharic: “For God’s sake, please help the affected people.”
Ethiopian tragedy
The deadliest landslide on record in Ethiopia devastated the mountainous village of Kencho Shacha Gozdi in Gofa district, located in the southern part of the country on July 21, 2024 (archived here).
Triggered by heavy rainfall, it killed at least 257 people, according to the UN, who warned the death toll could double.
On July 27, 2024, Ethiopia’s parliament announced three days of mourning as Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed visited the shattered community (archived here).
However, the footage linked to the landslide in Ethiopia is unrelated.
Indian disaster
AFP Fact Check used the video verification tool InVID-WeVerify to conduct reverse image searches on keyframes from the video.
The search results established that the footage shows a massive landslide that struck the Siju region of South Garo Hills in the northeastern Indian state of Meghalaya back in 2022 (archived here).
The clip used in the false post starts 23 seconds into the original footage, which was published by News18 on its official YouTube channel on June 28, 2022 — a day after the landslide.
The News18 logo appears in the top right corner.
Search results also included a link to a news broadcast released by North East TV, another Indian news channel whose report about the landslide contains similar footage (archived here).
“These are visuals from Siju, Meghalaya’s southern Garo Hills where a major landslide can be witnessed,” says the news presenter.
An Indian news website also reported on the landslide and shared a matching picture (archived here).
The same website also published a video on Facebook (archived here).
The natural sound of the landslide in the original footage of the event was altered in the clip falsely linked to Ethiopia. It was replaced by a woman’s voice appealing for support in Amharic.
