A photo has been shared hundreds of times on Facebook alongside a claim it shows coffins of coronavirus victims in Italy.
The Indonesian-language post translates to English as: “Italian Prime Minister HE Giuseppe Conte, cried in public over the deaths of thousands of his people who were infected with COVID-19., “‘We have lost so many of our people. Now we only hope for His mercy’, “475 people died on Thursday 19/3/20.\n\t627 people died on Friday 20/3/20.\n\t793 people died on Saturday 3/21/20.\n\t1895 people died in just 3 days!\n\t-Total death toll in Italy is more than 4,800 people!, “‘Lord have mercy on us sinners, may this catastrophe soon pass from Your Earth." Amen🙏’.”, Below is a screenshot of the misleading post:, More than 132,000 people in Italy have been infected with the novel coronavirus or COVID-19. The virus\xa0has killed more than 16,000 people in the country, the highest death toll in the world as of April 8, 2020, according to this WHO report., The photo has\xa0also been shared for around 150 times after it was posted\xa0here, here, here and here on Facebook, alongside a similar claim., The same photo with a similar claim in Polish can be seen here., The claim is false; the photo shows coffins of earthquake victims in Italy in 2009., A Google reverse image search followed by a keyword search found the same photo was published by Los Angeles Times in this photo gallery titled: “April 2009: Quake jolts L’Aquila, Italy.”, "The photo’s caption reads: “Mourners pray before the 205 coffins covered by flowers and photos of the dead, laid out on the parade ground of a police academy in the mountain city of LAquila in central Italy.”", Below is a screenshot of the photo on the Los Angeles website:, The police academy is located here., , The photographer is Carlo Ferraro and the photo was taken for European Pressphoto Agency. More photos of the April 10, 2009,\xa0event can be seen here., A 6.3-magnitude earthquake that hit L’Aquila, Italy, on April 6, 2009, killed 309 people and injured another 1,600. It destroyed much of the historic city and left at least 800,000 people homeless., This is not the only photo of coffins that was shared on social media to show the tragic ends of the coronavirus outbreak in Italy, for example photos posted on Facebook here and here., In this\xa0fact-check report, AFP has debunked the claim:\xa0the photos\xa0in fact show coffins of victims of a boat disaster near the Italian island of Lampedusa in October 2013., , Copyright © AFP 2017-2020.  All rights reserved.  Users can access and consult this website and use the share features available for personal, private, and non-commercial purposes.  Any other use, in particular any reproduction, communication to the public or distribution of the content of this website, in whole or in part, for any other purpose and/or by any other means, without a specific licence agreement signed with AFP, is strictly prohibited.  The subject matter depicted or included via links within the Fact Checking content is provided to the extent necessary for correct understanding of the verification of the information concerned.  AFP has not obtained any rights from the authors or copyright owners of this third party content and shall incur no liability in this regard.  AFP and its logo are registered trademarks.
This photo has circulated in reports about the coffins of earthquake victims in Italy in 2009 | AFP Fact Check