Claim: A video shows a landslide sweeping away houses amid the recent deadly floods in the northern areas of Pakistan.
Fact: The clip was linked to a 2021 landslide incident in Japan in news reports by reputable media outlets.
Following the recent flooding in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Gilgit-Baltistan, and Azad Jammu and Kashmir due to monsoon rains and cloudbursts, social media users circulated a clip showing houses being swept away by a landslide.
The video was shared with various captions, some claiming it was filmed in Buner, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, or Gilgit-Baltistan.
In some instances, the clip was combined with other footage showing flooding and damage; however, this fact check focuses only on the clip depicting the landslide sweeping away houses.
Floods in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
The death toll from flash floods in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) has risen to over 320, according to a situation report dated 18 August 2025 available with Soch Fact Check, as well as the Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA) and provincial government officials quoted in media reports. Buner saw the highest number of people killed at 227.
Over 150 people were injured and 336 houses were destroyed, as of 17 August 2025. “The affected districts include Swat, Buner, Bajaur, Torghar, Mansehra, Shangla, and Battagram,” the KP government said in a post on X.
89 trucks worth of aid was delivered to affected districts on the orders of KP Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur, the X post added, while stating that the PDMA has released PKR 800 million to the affected districts and PKR 500 million to Buner. PKR 1 billion was also provided to the Rescue and Relief Department to support flood affectees.
A meeting about the flood situation, held on 17 August 2025 at the Malakand Commissioner’s office and chaired by Gandapur, was briefed that the city of Mingora was most severely affected.
Rescue officials and district administration have appealed to people to relocate to safer locations as Swat became victim to flooding yet again on 18 August, Express News’ Urdu website reported.
In an update on 15 August, the KP government said, “On the directives of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health advisor, a health emergency has been imposed in the flood- and rain-affected districts (Buner, Swat, Mansehra, Bajaur, Mohmand, Abbottabad), flood control rooms established, all medical staff put on high alert, leaves cancelled, and treatment [of patients] in hospitals continues uninterrupted.”
“Rescue officials evacuated 2,071 individuals to safe locations,” it added.
“The provincial rescue agency told AFP that about 2,000 rescue workers were engaged in recovering bodies from the debris and carrying out relief operations in nine affected districts,” The Guardian reported.
Many of the residents were caught off guard, with one telling Al Jazeera that the floodwater “came so fast that many could not leave their homes”. The publication quoted the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) as saying over 500 people have died since 2 June in floods and mudslides triggered by higher-than-average rainfall.
“Climate change has directly amplified the triggers of cloudbursts in Pakistan, especially. Every 1°C rise allows the air to hold about 7% more moisture, increasing the potential for heavy rainfall in short bursts,” ABC News said, quoting experts.
The situation is made worse because of the unexpectedness of this phenomenon, with Pakistani officials saying “a warning to allow evacuations was not possible, as the cloudburst struck before residents could be alerted”, ITV reported.
In a 16 August weather alert, the Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD) warned of torrential rains that “may generate flash floods in local nullahs/streams of Chitral, Dir, Swat, Shangla, Mansehra, Kohistan, Abbottabad, Buner, Charsadda, Nowshera, Swabi, Mardan, Murree, Galliyat, Islamabad/Rawalpindi, Northeast Punjab, and Kashmir from 17 th to 19st (sic) August”.
The weather alert added that there were chances of landslides and mudslides, which could impact commuting, and heavy rainfalls, windstorms, and lightning “may damage weak structures like roof, wall of Kacha houses, electric poles, bill boards, vehicles and solar panels etc during the forecast period”.
In flood-hit Swabi district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, locals questioned the government’s failure to warn residents earlier and voiced frustration over what they perceived as a lack of support from local officials, according to the BBC. Although emergency teams and the military were deployed to assist, the equipment that Arif Khan, a local resident, had desperately requested remained just a few hundred metres away, stuck behind a flooded road. “The ambulances, medicines and excavators are on the way,” Nisar Ahmad, commissioner for the Mardan District, told the BBC. However, they were still unable to reach the village due to the severity of the flooding.
Dr Syed Faisal Saeed, chief meteorologist at the Pakistan Meteorological Department, explained that while such weather conditions are difficult to predict in advance, the general conditions leading to a cloudburst can be identified. S. D. Sanap, a scientist at the India Meteorological Department’s Pune office, told Reuters that cloudburst events are becoming increasingly frequent in the western Himalayas, spanning India and parts of Pakistan. However, he noted that attributing this rise to a single cause is challenging. Sanap added that predicting such events days in advance is nearly impossible, though radars can monitor dense cloud formation and provide short-term warnings of heavy rainfall.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check reverse-searched the clip and found that it was shared on Facebook as early as 3 July 2021 with the caption: “Scary footage showing the landslide in Atami city, Japan this morning with 20 people missing and two believed to be dead.”
To gain further context, we searched for the incident and found a CNN report from 4 July 2021 featuring the viral clip. According to the article, a landslide swept through a seaside city, southwest of Tokyo, Japan in July 2021. Footage shared on social media showed a powerful black mudslide rushing down a mountainside, engulfing homes and infrastructure as locals watched in horror. The massive mudslide in Atami, Shizuoka prefecture, occurred around 10:30 am local time on 3 July 2021, following torrential rainfall in parts of the region. At the time, an Atami city official confirmed to CNN that two women had died in the landslide.
According to a BBC report from the same date, hundreds of rescuers began sweeping the hillside for survivors a day after a torrent of black mud tore through the city. Similar to CNN’s report, the BBC’s article also reiterated that several houses were destroyed in the 2021 mudslide, which had followed heavy rainfall. However, the BBC article did not include the viral clip; instead it referenced a social media video of mud cascading down a mountain in the Shizuoka prefecture, “weaving through the city of Atami toward the sea.”
Some viral posts also contained a Geo News bulletin voiceover. A search for this voiceover led to a Geo News bulletin from 16 August. The first headline from this bulletin, between 00:03 and 00:43, appears to have been used in the viral video. However, the bulletin itself does not include the viral clip. This indicates that the audio from the bulletin was extracted and overlaid onto the video in the claim.
Since the video first appeared online in 2021 in connection with a landslide in Atami, Japan, and the original Geo News bulletin, whose voiceover was used, does not contain the viral clip of the landslide either, we conclude that the video in the claim is entirely unrelated to the recent flooding in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Gilgit-Baltistan.
Virality
The clip was shared here, here, and here on Facebook. Archived here, here, and here.
On Instagram, it was shared here, here, here, here, and here. Archived here, here, here, here, and here.
On X, it was shared here (archive) and here (archive).
Conclusion: The clip is unrelated to the recent flooding in northern Pakistan. The clip was linked to a 2021 landslide incident in Japan in news reports by reputable media outlets.
–
Background image in cover photo: Dawn/AFP
To appeal against our fact-check, please send an email to appeals@sochfactcheck.com