Myanmar’s ruling junta said in October 2025 that it had recaptured from an ethnic armed group a town on a trade highway to China. Online posts that surfaced during the fighting falsely claimed a major bridge had been severely damaged. However, the picture they shared depicts a crossing destroyed a year ago in a state hundreds of kilometres (miles) away.<\/p>\n
“The TNLA group detonated and destroyed the Moe Tay Bridge, which connects Hsipaw with Namtu and Namsang townships, and fled,” reads a Burmese-language\u00a0Facebook post<\/a> on October 8, 2025, using the acronym for the ethnic armed group Ta’ang National Liberation Army and mentioning three towns in Myanmar’s war-wrecked Shan state.<\/p>\n The accompanying image shows a collapsed bridge.<\/p>\n Screenshot of false Facebook post taken October 13, 2025, with a red X added by AFP<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n Similar posts also\u00a0circulated on X<\/a> and TikTok<\/a> as the ruling junta and the TNLA battled for control over Hsipaw town, where a highway to China’s Yunnan province passes through<\/span>.\u00a0According to the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper, the military\u00a0reoccupied Hsipaw<\/a> completely on October 16 (archived link<\/a>).<\/p>\n There have been no official reports the Moe Tay Bridge had been destroyed during the clashes.<\/span><\/p>\n Local news outlet Shan News earlier reported the crossing collapsed but later retracted<\/a> its article (archived link<\/a>). <\/span>“A re-examination of the Moe Tay Bridge, located in Hsipaw Township, Shan state, revealed that it was not actually damaged,” it said on October 8.<\/span><\/p>\n AFP reached out to a resident of <\/span>Hsipaw who saw no damage to the bridge as of <\/span>October 13.<\/span><\/p>\n A reverse image search<\/a> on Google was not able to trace the source of <\/span>the circulating picture but a\u00a0<\/span>keyword search<\/a> found it corresponds to a photo published by the Irrawaddy<\/a> newspaper on October 8, 2024\u00a0(archived link<\/a>).<\/p>\n The report identifies the structure as the Kyeintali Chaung Bridge in western Rakhine state — located over 600 kilometres (370 miles) away from Moe Tay Bridge. It said the bridge was destroyed by junta troops.<\/p>\n Myanmar has been mired in civil war since a 2021 coup deposed the civilian government, with the military battling a myriad of pro-democracy guerrillas and ethnic armed organisations.<\/p>\n