A video of a factory fire in southern Taiwan has surfaced amid social media posts that falsely linked the blaze to recent fighting between the Burmese military and ethnic rebels in Myanmar’s northern Shan State. The clip matches other footage of the fire at an industrial park in Tainan published by Taiwanese media.
“Explosion of ammunition depot in Laukkai, targeted for the third time,” read a Birmostian statement. Facebook post on July 19, 2024.
Myanmar’s junta has bombed lukewarm — a town near the border with China that has been held by the rebel Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army since January 2024 — several times in July (archived link).
The last strike On August 2, a hospital was hit, killing 10 people (archived link).
The accompanying 30-second video showed a huge column of black smoke rising into the air from a distant fire.
In the video, a male voice can be heard saying: “Laukkai has been bombed in an air raid. The ammunition storage has been destroyed.”
A sticker in Burmese repeats the claim.
Myanmar has been in turmoil since the military coup in February 2021, which ousted the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi and sparked conflict across the country.
The same video was also published alongside similar false claims on YouTube And TikTok.
But the video shows a fire at a factory in southern Taiwan.
Factory explosion in Taiwan
Keyword and reverse image searches using keyframes from the video resulted in longer TikTok video published on July 18, 2024, with captions in Indonesian such as “Taiwan is on fire” (archived link).
Below is a screenshot of the video of the fake post (left) and the TikTok video (right):
In the original footage, no one speaks.
Further keyword searches yielded a video Taiwan News report on July 18, 2024 stating that an explosion had occurred at a factory in the southern city of Tainan (archived link).
Aerial footage in the video included a Chinese temple and a blue water tower, which match the elements seen in the TikTok video.
A separate article from Taiwanese news stated that the fire broke out in the Shanshang industrial area in Tainan and all workers were evacuated, with no casualties reported in the incident (archived link).
Google MapsStreetview imagery of the industrial area shows features similar to those in the TikTok video, including a sign for the Guang Eou Aluminum Factory and the Red Temple (archived link).
Below is a screenshot of a frame from the TikTok video (left) and the Google Street View footage (right):
