WASHINGTON: The White House on Tuesday described leaked and graphic video of a US helicopter strike in Baghdad three years ago which killed two Reuters employees and others as “tragic.”
But President Barack Obama’s spokesman Robert Gibbs stressed after the previously classified video was released by whistleblower website WikiLeaks that US forces in war zones take pains to avoid civilian casualties.
The gun camera footage, posted on the Internet, includes audio conversations between Apache pilots and controllers in which they identify the men in a Baghdad street as armed insurgents and ask for permission to open fire.
“I do not know whether the president has seen the video that was released on the Internet. Obviously, it is very graphic in nature and it’s extremely tragic,” Gibbs told reporters.
“Our military will take every precaution necessary to ensure the safety and security of civilians, and particularly those that report in those dangerous places on behalf of news organizations.”
Gibbs referred all questions about investigations into the July 2007 incident to the Pentagon.
WikiLeaks said that it had obtained the video “from a number of military whistleblowers” and decrypted it. It posted the video at collateralmurder.org.
The footage shows an aerial view of a number of men on a Baghdad street including two later identified as Reuters employees Namir Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh.
At least two individuals in the video appear to be carrying weapons but most are unarmed. The Apache pilots also appear to mistake a camera carried by one of the Reuters employees as a rocket-propelled grenade launcher or RPG.
At one point, the Apache pilots tell controllers they have spotted “five to six individuals with AK-47s” and ask for permission to “engage.”
The Apache pilots open fire with the helicopter’s cannon after which one says there are a “bunch of bodies lying there.”
“Look at those dead b******s,” one says.
Another replies: “Nice.”
Shortly after the initial shooting, a van pulls up to pick up the dead and wounded and is fired upon by the Apaches. Two children in the van were injured and evacuated by US ground troops who arrived later on the scene.
A US military official did not dispute the authenticity of the video but said it “doesn’t give new information, it just gives footage.”
“We had insurgents and reporters in an area where US forces were about to be ambushed,” the official added. “At the time we weren’t able to discern whether (the Reuters employees) were carrying cameras or weapons.”
According to the AP, The US military said on Tuesday that it can’t find the copy of the video.
Capt. Jack Henzlik, a spokesman for US Central Command, said that forces in Iraq have not been able to locate the video within its files.
”We’re attempting to retrieve the video at this time,” Henzlik said.
Video footage allegedly shows a U.S. attack in Baghdad in July, 2007, in which two Iraqi journalists were killed
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