Multiple users in X, including PTI supporters, shared a photo of children on Thursday on the wooden sticks surrounded by water, claiming that they were victims of flooding in Punjab. However, the image is at least five years old.
Pakistan was beaten by mass floods in August of this year, which have charged more than 842 lives, displaced to 1.2 million people, affected more than 4 million, mainly on Punjab, and threatened economic losses between $ 6-10 billion so far.
Currently, South Punjab is in the middle of the devastating flood crisis, with districts such as fine, Bahawalpur and Dera Ghazi Khan flooded, leaving millions of affected residents and 1,400 villages submerged by less than 5 to 10 feet of water.
On Thursday, a photo that shows two children lying in a pile of sticks and rubble surrounded by what seemed that flood water was shared by a verified X account, which seemed to be a follower of PPP of previous publications.
The subtitle of the publication said: “You should have seen us during our prosperous times. We had our own homes and loved ones.” I was along with the hashtags ‘Saraiki Lives Matter’, ‘Saraiki Waseb Flood’ and ‘Save Saraiki Waseb’.
Saraiki is the language that is mainly spoken in South Punjab.
While the publication gathered 1,313 views, the photo quickly began to circulate on social networks.
Youtuber and former presenter Imran Riaz Khan also shared it with a broken heart emoji. Its publication accumulated around 66,000 views and shunned more than 2,000 times.
The photo was also shared by other users of social networks, as can be seen here, here, here, here, here, here and here, accumulating more than 17,000 views.
A verification of facts began to determine the veracity of the claim due to its virality and public interest in floods and damage.
A reverse image search produced the image used in a Jang daily Report dated September 7, 2020, with the following holder: “Rain and flood disasters: 667,000 homeless people, 14 dead, 4,800 villages submerged in Umarkot”.
Umarkot is a city in Sindh, and the story detailed the destruction that occurred there in the catastrophic floods of 2020.
The image was also found in a news of August 26, 2022 of the state station Pakistan radioentitled: “The members of the Federal Cabinet, Pak Army officers donate the one -month salary to the flood relief fund.”
However, none of the news reports shared a title with the photo that describes where it was or provided any other detail, such as the source or the photographer who took it.
The image was also shunned on social media platforms X, Instagram, Tiktok and Facebook during floods 2020 and 2022, as you can see here, here, here, here, here, here and here.
It was also shared last month, when floods wreaked havoc on Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Gilgit Baltistan, with users of social networks stating that the images showed scenes of the regions as you can see here, here and here.
Therefore, the real location and the occurrence of the image could not be determined conclusively, while users in the comments claimed variable that it was from Sindh, Punjab and Afghanistan.
However, the fact that a media shared the image in 2020 conclusively shows that it is not one of the floods of 2025.
Therefore, the verification of facts determined that the statement that a viral image shows the victims in Punjab of recent floods is FAKE. The photo has been shared several times throughout the years related to the various floods in Pakistan and is at least as old as 2020, when it was shared by a means of communication in relation to Sindh.
This fact verification was originally published by Iverify Pakistan, a CEJ-IBA and UNDP project.
