A photo from 2018 of a baby surviving a ferry accident is being shared claiming it shows a photo of a child who survived the recent Sriwijaya Air plane crash in Indonesia. BOOM found that the photo dates back to 2018 when the baby was rescued from a ship accident near Selayar Islands of Indonesia.
The photo is viral as rescuers are still looking for the victims of those feared dead in the Sriwijaya Air flight which went missing on Jan 9, 2020 minutes after take off. With rescuers till looking for the debris of the plane, reports fear that all 50 passengers including 12 crew have died. The Indonesian government has launched a sea and air search effort with 11 navy ships, two helicopters and 300 personnel.
The photo shows a crying baby wrapped in life vest surrounded by people including an uniformed official is being shared with the caption thanking the miracle that the baby survived the Sriwijaya Air plane crash, which is reported to have left 50 passengers and 12 crew members. The caption reads, "Breaking News #Allah hu akbar one baby survived in Jakarta Indonesia plane crash"
FACT CHECK
We ran a reverse image search and found that the automatic keyword detected by Google read, "bayi yang selamat dari kapal tenggelam" which translates to "Baby who survived the sinking ship". We went through the results and found a news report from 2018 which said that the baby survived an accident after a ship carrying at least 139 passengers sank in Selayar Islands of Indonesia.
The report in TribunJateng identified the carrier ship as KM Lestari Maju which sank as it was about to dock and mentioned that several passengers managed to escape by swimming towards the coast. We then searched for Baby surviving KM Lestari Maju accident on YouTube and found a story by CNN Indonesia published on July 5, 2018 about a eleven-month old baby surviving the shipwreck.
The story identified the baby as Muhammad Asnawi Altamis who was rescued from the accident with his parents. The CNN story showed the family at home with his father also describing the traumatic experience to the reporter.
We also found tweet from October 30, 2018 by the then Indonesian disaster mitigation agency spokesman, Sutopo Purwo Nugroho who said that the photo was being shared claiming it showed a survivor in another Indonesian plane crash - JT 610 by Lion Air. In his tweet Nugrho asked people to not believe rumours and clarified that the baby survived the ship accident.
Additonally, we looked for reports of survivors in the Sriwijaya Air Boeing 737-500 crash and did not find any credible reports about any survivor. According to news stories, efforts are still on to trace the full remains of the plane and the passengers.