On December 13, 2020 a facebook post was shared in the facebook group ሳልሳይ ወያነ ትግራይ ንምስረታ ሃገረ ትግራይ (a group with 31.2K members) by a facebook user named Mooyiiboon Dhuufeera (an account with 432 friends) sharing the image which contains four different pictures of crashed cars with the claim that these vehicles were smashed in a traffic accident which occured in Zemetin kebele of Dansha woreda, in western Gonder on December 13, 2020. The post which is pleading with members of the group to share it further claims that the crash accident took the lives of 38 people and invited friends to see the dead bodies in a telegram channel using the link the facebook client attached for the alleged purpose of identifying the identity of the corpses. The telegram channel doesn’t have any photos of the dead bodies. Despite the claim by the user, HaqCheck has confirmed that the pictures below do not indicate any traffic accident happened in western Gondar recently, rendering the verdict FALSE.
Granted, Ethiopia is one of the countries in the world with high rates of car accidents. During the last fiscal year 4,133 people died because of traffic accidents across the country. This is also true in the case of the Amhara Regional State. Addis Zeybe recently reported that in the last two weeks of November 2020 in Bahir Dar alone 59 traffic accidents occured in the Amhara Regional State claiming the lives of 40 people. In addition, 25 people were injured seriously and 19 people were wounded slightly, according to the statement by the Amhara Police Commission to Addis Zeybe. Therefore, it is true that traffic accidents are a serious problem in the Amhara Regional State and the country in general.
Image 1: Claimed Image
Image 2: Original Image
However, a reverse image search of the image that was shared to a group by the facebook account indicates that the car crash did not happen recently in western Gondar. The image was published for the first time on facebook by Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation on August 19, 2019. The pictures show a traffic accident that occurred in the Zemetin kebele of Dejena woreda, esatern Gojjam, Amhara regional state. The accident in which a truck and bus crashed killed 39 people and seriously wounded 11 people at the time. Furthermore, 26 people had been slightly injured in the accident that took place in August 2019. The post can be accessed using the following link.
In conclusion HaqCheck has interrogated the post and confirmed that the image doesn’t show any traffic accident happened on December 13, 2020 in western Gondar, rating it as FALSE.
Fact Checked by: Hagos Gebreamlak
Edited by: Bruck Negash Teame
The following article is part of HaqCheck, Addis Zeybe’s multilingual fact checking running in five languages (Affan Oromo, Amharic, Somali, Tigrinya and English)
Editor’s Note:
The following article was published as part of Addis Zeybe’s multilingual fact checking initiative. As the reconstruction of our website continues, Addis Zeybe would like its readers to note that it will be publishing fact checking articles on a permanent basis in five languages (Afaan Oromo, Amharic, Somali, Tigrinya and English. Addis Zeybe will also be publishing monthly pandemic impact assessment and human rights reports in the coming months.
