Claim: A viral video on social media shows a small child being rescued in the aftermath of recent floods in Pakistan.
Fact: The claim is misleading as the video is from 2020, not from recent floods.
On 25 August 2022, journalist Hamid Mir posted a video with an Urdu caption that, when translated to English, reads, “Allah has saved this little life, thousands and millions of flood victims also have the shelter of Allah.”
In the video, a man pulls a very young baby out of the soil; an umbilical cord is hanging from the baby’s navel, signaling that she must have been born shortly before.
Fact or Fiction?
Mir’s tweet does not imply that the child was rescued during recent floods; however, thousands of people who retweeted the video have claimed the baby was endangered and rescued during recent floods, which have caused devastation around the country.
For example, a user retweeted the video with the caption “To Whom God Save, No one can kill him. In Record break Flood, This small innocent child found save and secure. It’s appeal you to help these people by giving donations to @GovtofPunjabPK and @pakpgov in relief task.”
Another account shared the same video claiming “Miracle, a newborn baby is found in the aftermath of floods in Pakistan this week.”
To investigate the claim, Soch Fact Check conducted Reverse Image searches on Google and Yandex, which showed that the same video was posted by a Facebook page back in December 2020. It is not clear where exactly the video was shot but it was posted online in 2020 and has resurfaced during the recent flooding.
Yandex’s result showed that it was reposted again in January 2022 on Instagram here.
Virality
An organic search on Facebook shows that the video resurfaced during recent floods with an Urdu caption that, translated into English, reads; “See in which condition a child was born, the umbilical cord is still attached. The mother was washed away by the flood, buried under the soil, and died, the child is still alive and it’s a miracle.”
Soch Fact Check conducted a CrowdTangle analysis for the 30-day period from 28 July to 27 August using the Urdu caption:
The search term received 250 interactions across 20 public posts. It is shared here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here on Facebook.
Conclusion: Viral video of a newborn baby being rescued is from 2020 not during recent floods in Pakistan is false. The video was reported first in 2020 and resurfaced during the calamity situation.