Inqilab claims airstrikes near Teknaf border, but uses footage from old fire at Homalin port

A Bangladeshi newspaper, Daily Inqilab, recently published a video on social media claiming to show Myanmar conducting airstrikes across the Teknaf border — the southeastern tip of Bangladesh that shares a boundary with Myanmar. A fact-check by Dismislab, however, found that the footage actually depicts an old fire incident at Homalin port in Myanmar.

The video was posted on July 2, 2026, from the verified Facebook page of Daily Inqilab. The caption read: “Myanmar airstrikes across the Teknaf border! Tensions are running high.” (Translated from Bangla.) As of the time of writing, the video had been shared more than 500 times, received more than 1,000 reactions and viewed more than 130,000 times.

The same claim was also posted from multiple other accounts — 1, 2, 3.

The video originally posted from Daily Inqilab’s page was also reshared to spread conspiracy theories. A Facebook account under the name “Al Abrar” reposted the same video in a post and claimed in the caption that the incident was the result of a “provocative” move by India. The caption read: “Myanmar airstrikes across the Teknaf border! Tensions are running high — this incident at the Bangladesh border has essentially been engineered through Indian provocation, pushing the country toward instability.” (Translated from Bangla.) As of the time of writing, that post had been shared more than 30 times and received more than 100 reactions.

The same caption used by the account under the name Al Abrar was then copied word for word and posted from multiple other accounts — 1, 2, 3, 4.

Multiple previous Dismislab reports have documented the “Al Abrar” account running communally incendiary campaigns — 1, 2.

To verify the footage, Dismislab conducted reverse image searches on several keyframes from the video. The searches led to an identical video posted on April 21 from a Facebook profile. The caption on that post read: “Fire on an oil tanker in Myanmar.” A second video showing a nearly identical scene was also found, with a caption that read: “A powerful explosion at Homalin port in the Sagaing region of Myanmar caused a fire that destroyed more than 10 fuel tanks. Eyewitnesses said the fire spread rapidly and several people were injured.” 

A subsequent keyword search led to multiple news reports published by several outlets on the incident — 1, 2. These confirmed that the footage depicted a devastating fire that broke out on April 20 at a river port near the Myoma monastery in Homalin Township, in Myanmar’s Sagaing region. A report published on April 23 by Mizzima, a Myanmar-based news outlet, stated that the fire broke out at around 6:30pm on April 20 when excess heat was produced during the refueling of a vehicle at the river port in Homalin. The blaze destroyed at least 22 watercraft and two vehicles. One woman and one man were killed, and at least 11 others were seriously injured.

Several news outlets, including the Indian outlet Firstpost, also published videos covering the incident — 1, 2.

For further context, Dismislab looked into the location of Homalin. It was found that Homalin Township is located in the Sagaing region of northwestern Myanmar. Bangladesh shares no border with this part of Myanmar.

In conclusion, the video published by Daily Inqilab under the claim that it showed Myanmar conducting airstrikes across the Teknaf border is in fact footage of a fire that broke out at a river port in Myanmar’s Sagaing region, near the Indian state of Manipur’s border — a location entirely unconnected to the Bangladesh-Myanmar border.

All social media captions, quotations, and news excerpts in this article have been translated into English from the languages in which they were originally posted or published.

The original version of this fact-check report was published in Bengali on Dismislab’s Bengali website on July 3, 2026. The English translation was completed later; however, to maintain time accuracy and avoid any potential misinterpretation, the English version has been published with the original publication date.