A photo has been shared thousands of times in Facebook posts which claim it shows a pagoda in Bagan that was purportedly destroyed in a bomb attack on August 7, 2021. However, the claim is false; there were no reports of a bomb in Bagan at this time and the photo has been circulating online since at least 2019.

"What happened in Bagan this afternoon. I am so sad. It was a bomb attack on a pagoda in Bagan," reads a Burmese-language Facebook post from August 7.

"Bagan is a place with so many pagodas. You are not a Burmese if you don’t 'up' this".

The post -- shared more than 9,000 times -- shows a photo of smoke rising from a burning building.

A Google reserve image search traced the photo of the burning building to Facebook posts from February 2019 about a fire at a monastery in New Bagan, a residential area close to the heart of the archeological zone.

The Burmese-language post reads: "A fire broke out around 12:45 in the afternoon on February 17, 2019 at a monastery in Min Nan Thu village in New Bagan city. Two fire trucks were dispatched to fight the blaze".

According to the article, the fire started from an electrical fault and burnt down two stories of the monastery, although no injuries were reported.

https://factcheck.afp.com/http%253A%252F%252Fdoc.afp.com%252F9KV472-1