On July 12, 2007, a series of air-to-ground attacks were conducted by a team of two U.S. AH-64 Apache helicopters in Al-Amin al-Thaniyah, New Baghdad, during the Iraqi insurgency which followed the invasion of Iraq. On April 5, 2010, the attacks received worldwide coverage and controversy following the release of 39 minutes of classified gunsight footage by WikiLeaks. The video, which WikiLeaks titled Collateral Murder, showed the crew firing on a group of people and killing several of them, including two Reuters journalists, and then laughing at some of the casualties, all of whom were civilians. An anonymous U.S. military official confirmed the authenticity of the footage, which provoked global discussion on the legality and morality of the attacks.
In the first strike, the crews of two Apaches directed 30 mm cannon fire at a group of ten Iraqi men. Among the group were two Iraqi war correspondents working for Reuters, Saeed Chmagh and Namir Noor-Eldeen. Seven men (including Noor-Eldeen) were killed during this first strike; Chmagh, who was injured, died in the second strike.
The second strike, also using 30 mm rounds, was directed at a van whose driver, Saleh Matasher Tomal, drove by and helped the wounded Chmagh. Both Chmagh and Tomal were killed in the second strike, and two of Tomal's children were badly wounded.
In a third strike, Apache pilots watched people, including some armed men, run into a building and attacked the building with several AGM-114 Hellfire missiles.
Context
According to Tom Raju, a reporter at CNN, "the soldiers of Bravo Company, 2–16 Infantry had been under fire all morning from rocket-propelled grenades and small arms on the first day of Operation Ilaaj in Baghdad". Al Jazeera stated that the Army had received "reports of small arms fire", but were unable to positively identify the gunmen. Apache helicopters were called in by a soldier in the Humvee (Hotel 2–6) under attack from the same position used by Namir Noor-Eldeen to photograph the vehicle. According to a military review, soldiers in that company "had been under sporadic small arms and rocket propelled grenade fire since" the operation—described as "clearing their sector and looking for weapons caches"—began.
The Air Weapons Team (AWT) of two Apache AH-64s from the 1st Cavalry Division had been requested by the 2nd Battalion, 16th Infantry Regiment (2–16), 4th Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Kauzlarich, before July 12 to support Operation Ilaaj. Tasked to conduct escort, armed reconnaissance patrols, and counter-IED and counter-mortar operations, the two helicopters left Camp Taji at 9:24 a.m. They arrived on station in New Baghdad at 9:53 a.m., where sporadic attacks on coalition forces continued.
Incidents
Attack on personnel
In the video on the morning of July 12, 2007, the crews of two United States Army AH-64 Apache helicopters observe a gathering of men near a section of Baghdad in the path of advancing U.S. ground troops. The crew estimates the group is twenty men. Among the group are two journalists working for Reuters, Namir Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh. While the two are carrying media cards, a military officer claimed they were not wearing distinctive clothing identifying themselves as such. Noor-Eldeen has a camera and Chmagh is talking on his mobile phone. Two other men in the group appear to have rifles. Another has a long cylindrical object which a U.S. army general investigating the incident said was a rocket-propelled grenade.
The Apache gunner says that there are "five to six individuals with AK-47s" and requests permission to engage the group which is granted. Noor-Eldeen walks ahead of the group and peers around a street corner to aim his long-lensed camera at U.S. Humvees which are about 100 metres down the street. Noor-Eldeen's camera is misidentified by the Apache gunner who says "He's got an RPG!" Three pictures of the U.S. Humvee were found on his camera's memory card when it was recovered by U.S. soldiers. The men become obscured behind a building as the Apache moves around the group. Both helicopters strafe a group of ten men with 30 mm rounds once they became visible again. After the lead helicopter fires, one of the crew shouts "Hahaha. I hit 'em" and another member of the crew responds, "Oh yeah, look at those dead bastards".
Seven men were killed, including Noor-Eldeen, with three others being wounded. Once the group is eliminated, the Apache pilots direct the ground troops to move up to the position of the attack to clear the area.
Attack on a van
As the ground troops advanced, a wounded Chmagh was seen crawling and attempting to stand. As the U.S. soldiers moved towards the site of the attack, a van stopped near Chmagh. The military said that the van was "fair game under Army rules", because it had no visible markings to suggest it was an ambulance or a protected vehicle. The Apache crew alerted the ground troops of the van and requested permission to engage the vehicle before the ground troops arrived. The Apache crew saw unarmed men exit the vehicle and move to Chmagh. The Apache crew requested permission to engage, stating it "looks like [the men] possibly, picking up bodies and weapons" from the scene, and repeated their request to shoot, before they received permission to begin firing on the van and its occupants. Chmagh was killed along with three other men, while two children, not known to be in the van to the U.S. forces, were injured. The children, a girl and boy, suffered injuries. The girl suffered from a stomach wound and glass in her eyes, and the boy a head injury. Just as the van was destroyed, U.S. ground troops made their final turn and arrived on the road with the van. The Apache crew then alerted the ground troops that they believed that they could see an injured child moving around inside the destroyed van. On the video, it is then seen that Army soldiers establish a perimeter around the site and extract the children from the burning van. When the helicopter pilots discover that they have killed Iraqi civilians and wounded two children, one of them is heard to say: "Well, it's their fault for bringing their kids into a battle".
Attack on a building
The ground troops who secured the site of the first two strikes then receive small arms fire from nearby buildings.
There is a period of 20 minutes not included on the leaked tape. According to the internal legal review, the helicopters engaged a group of armed insurgents, and that some were seen entering a nearby building.
As the tape resumes, two men, one holding an AK-47, are seen walking. They split up and the footage follows one who appears to be armed. He walks into a building which has been identified as the source of fire at U.S. ground troops. They request permission to fire a missile at the building, describing it as "abandoned" or "under construction". The ground controller responds, "If you've [positively identified] the individuals in the building with weapons, go ahead and engage the building". As the pilot positions the helicopter to attack the building, two unarmed men walk towards, and perhaps into, the building. As the gunner fires the first missile, another man is seen walking along the street in front of the building. The missile hits the building, and the man is caught in the explosion. The crew then reposition the helicopter and fire two more missiles into the upper floors of the building.
WikiLeaks said in the preface to their shorter video of the incident that "some of the men appear to have been armed [although] the behavior of nearly everyone was relaxed". Julian Assange said "permission to engage was given before the word 'RPG' was ever used". Politifact stated: "When Assange points out in the context of justifying the title 'Collateral Murder' that the word 'RPG' was not used until after permission to engage was given, he leaves the impression that the soldiers were given the okay to open fire on a group of unarmed men, or men believed to be unarmed. But the video and accompanying audio make clear that the soldiers in the helicopter said they spotted 'weapons' among those in the group—later identified by an internal army investigator as an AK-47 and an RPG." Assange later said "Based upon visual evidence, I suspect there probably were AKs and an RPG, but I'm not sure that means anything". The legal review carried out by the U.S. Army stated that the two children were evacuated to the 28th Combat Support Hospital via Forward Operating Base Loyalty, then transferred to an Iraqi medical facility the next day.
The Guardian stated "It is unclear if some of the men are armed but Noor-Eldeen can be seen with a camera". Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com said that "the vast majority of the men were clearly unarmed". Greenwald called the second airstrike a "plainly unjustified killing of a group of unarmed men carrying away an unarmed, seriously wounded man to safety". The Australian newspaper said the group was displaying "no obvious hostile action".
In The Independent on April 8, 2010, human rights activist Joan Smith wrote that the engagements were like a game to the helicopter crew. She wrote that the co-pilot urged a dying, unarmed journalist to pick up a weapon as he tried to crawl to safety and that "the Apache crew open[ed] fire on civilians". When the crew were informed that a child had been injured by their attack, one initially responded, "Ah damn. Oh well", and a minute later continued, "Well, it's their fault for bringing kids into a battle". Smith describes this reaction as inhuman. She draws parallels with soldiers who suffered post-traumatic stress disorder in earlier wars. She continued, "the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are inflicting huge psychological damage on combatants". She says that in refusing to recognize this, the US military fails both its own soldiers and their victims. She then concludes that command structures need to be in place to identify "combatants with serious psychological problems".
On Democracy Now!, Josh Stieber, who was at the time assigned to Bravo Company 2–16, said that although it's natural to "judge or criticize the soldiers", in fact "this is how [they] were trained to act". He said that the debate should be re-framed, that it is more appropriate to ask "questions of the larger system" that teaches "doing these things is in the best interests of my own country". In 2009, Stieber left the military as a conscientious objector and became a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War. In a later interview on the World Socialist Web Site, Stieber said that the attack "exposes so clearly the fallacy of using war as a tool of foreign policy or as a way to supposedly spread 'freedom and democracy' around the world".
Ethan McCord, a soldier who arrived on the scene after the attack, stated in an interview for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation:
From being in the perspective of the Apache helicopter crew, I can see where a group of men gathering, when there's a firefight just a few blocks away, which I was involved in, and they're carrying weapons, one of which is an RPG. …Their overall mission that day was to protect us, to provide support for us, so I can see where the initial attack on the group of men was warranted. However, personally I don't feel that the attack on the van was warranted. I think that the people could have been deterred from doing what they were doing in the van by simply firing a few warning shots versus completely obliterating the van and its occupants.
On June 7, 2010, The New Yorker reported that Kristinn Hrafnsson, an investigative reporter who worked on the Collateral Murder video and later became a spokesman for WikiLeaks, said he had found the owner of the building involved in the incident. The owner told him that three families were living in the building and seven residents had died, including his wife and daughter. The report stated that the helicopter crew did not know how many people were in the building when they destroyed it with missiles, and that "there is evidence that unarmed people have both entered and are nearby". It concluded that an investigating officer would want to know how the armed men were identified as combatants from the earlier engagement; would question the nature of the collateral-damage estimate carried out by the crew before the missiles were launched; and would wish to determine whether a missile attack was a proportionate response to the threat.
A Pentagon spokesman said the video did not contradict the official finding that the helicopters' crew acted within the rules of engagement and said that the military's own inquiry backed the assessment that the group of men were carrying a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG).
Assange stated that the attack on the van was the most damning part of the video: "I'm very sceptical that was done under the rules of engagement; and, if it was legal, the rules of engagement must be changed". Fox News reported in 2010 that the rules of engagement in Iraq had not been changed since the incident occurred.