Claim: A photo depicts a stream of blood in a residential area of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, likely after Eid-ul-Azha this year.
Fact: The photo is old, and previously surfaced on social media in 2022. There is no credible evidence to suggest that the image is from KP.
Fact or Fiction?
On 21 June 2024, X (formerly Twitter) user @MemonaMushtaq posted an image which compares a dirty street in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) with the cleaner roads in Punjab. The photo labelled ‘KPK’ shows a stream of blood flooding the street of a residential area, likely depicting a scene following Eid-ul-Azha, while the photo labelled ‘Punjab’ shows a truck hosing down clean roads.
The caption reads,
“یہ ھے نوازشریف اور عمران نیازی میں فرق [This is the difference between Nawaz Sharif and Imran Niazi”.
Soch Fact Check found the claim to be false.
Journalist Iftikhar Firdous shared a screenshot of the tweet by @PMLNDigital, pointing out that Pakistan’s ruling party, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), shared a fake image which shows blood in the streets of KP, a province governed by the opposition party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), to criticise their governance during Eid-ul-Azha.
The image was also posted by Chief Minister Punjab Maryam Nawaz, he said. But the photo has since been deleted from both @PMLNDigital and the Chief Minister’s account, without any acknowledgment of its inauthenticity, he added. A screenshot of her post is reproduced below.
Firdous stated that the image is old citing a tweet by Bunty (@atang_waddi) from 2022. The latter had shared the photo to criticise the Pakistan Peoples Party’s performance in Sindh at the time.
A reverse image search led Soch Fact Check to a September 2016 article stating that streets in Dhaka, Bangladesh had transformed into red rivers after rain and Eid-ul-Azha sacrifices. Roads were submerged under rainwater mixed with the blood of sacrificial animals in the capital, it added. The article includes various images of streets flooded with blood, similar to the one in the viral claim.
Several credible media outlets including BBC, CNN and The Guardian also reported on it at the time.
Despite sifting through several images available on the internet linked to Dhaka, Soch Fact Check could not find credible evidence and, therefore, cannot confirm that the viral image is from Bangladesh. However, given that it surfaced on social media in 2022, we can conclude that the photograph is not recent.
Moreover, it was shared and then deleted by X accounts linked to the PML-N, which suggests that the photograph may have been falsely linked to KP.
Virality:
Some users also posted the image with a different caption, “انتشار اور ترقی میں فرق [The difference between chaos and progress].”
The viral photo was posted here, here, here and here on X.
The post by @MemonaMushtaq on X received 3,419 views, 25 likes and 10 reposts.
It was also posted here, here, here, here and here on Facebook.
Conclusion: The photo depicting a stream of blood in a residential area of KP, likely showing the aftermath of Eid-ul-Azha in the province this year, is old. The image previously made rounds on social media in 2022. Additionally, there is no credible evidence to suggest that the image is from KP.
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