By AGENCIES
WASHINGTON/BAGHDAD: The release of classified US military video showing a 2007 attack by Apache helicopters that killed a dozen people in Baghdad, including two Reuters news staff, prompted calls for government investigation.
The video was released on Monday by a group that promotes leaking to fight government and corporate corruption. Iraqi Journalists' Union chief Mouyyad Al-Lami said Tuesday the footage is evidence of a crime and should be investigated.
The group, WikiLeaks, told a news conference at the National Press Club it acquired encrypted video of the July 12, 2007, attack from military whistleblowers and had been able to view and investigate it after breaking the encryption code.
A US defense official confirmed that the video and audio were authentic.
The helicopter gunsight video, with an audio track of talking between the fliers, shows an aerial view of a group of men moving about a square in a Baghdad neighborhood. The fliers identify some of the men as armed.
WikiLeaks said the men in the square include Reuters photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen, 22, and his assistant and driver Saeed Chmagh, 40, who were killed in the incident.
"The gathering at the corner that is fired up on has about nine people in it," Julian Assange, a WikiLeaks spokesman said. The gunsight tracks the two Reuters news staff as the fliers identify their cameras as weapons. The helicopter initially opens fire on the small group.
Minutes later a van comes by, and starts assisting the wounded, and the helicopter opens fire on the van.
Meanwhile on Tuesday, at least five bombs ripped through apartment buildings across Baghdad and another struck a market, killing 49 people and wounding more than 160. Iraqi officials blamed Al-Qaeda in Iraq insurgents for the violence — the latest sign the country's fragile security is dissolving in the chaos of the unresolved election.
It was the fourth set of attacks with multiple casualties across Iraq in five days, a spate of violence that has claimed more than 100 lives.
Iyad Allawi, whose bloc came out ahead in the vote by two seats over Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki's, said the political deadlock lies behind the new wave of violence. He also raised the prospect that the impasse could last for months as both sides try to cobble together the majority needed to govern.
"Because people are sensing there are powers who want to obstruct the path of democracy, terrorists and Al-Qaeda are on the go. ... I think their operations will increase in Iraq," Allawi told The Associated Press in an interview.
He added that he did not foresee any clear timetable to form a government.
Maj. Gen. Qassim Al-Moussawi, an Iraqi military spokesman for Baghdad's operations command center, said the attackers detonated blasts using homemade bombs and, in one case, a car packed with explosives. He said there were at least seven blasts; the US Embassy in Baghdad said there were five.
Al-Moussawi blamed Al-Qaeda in Iraq for the explosions and said Iraq was in a "state of war" with terrorists.
Police and medical officials said the death toll from the explosions and the car bomb was at least 49, and that women and children were among the dead.
The explosions started at about 9:30 a.m. at a residential building in the Shula area of northwest Baghdad. Then a car bomb struck in an intersection about a mile away, damaging nearby buildings, police and hospital officials said.
A few minutes later, at 9:45 a.m. a bomb left in a plastic bag exploded at a restaurant in the Allawi district downtown, near the Culture Ministry.
Dozens of people gathered at the bomb site in the hours after the explosion, digging through bricks in the hopes of finding survivors.
Several hours later, a parked car bomb exploded in a market, killing six civilians, a police officer said. A doctor at the nearby Yarmouk Hospital where those caught in the blast were taken confirmed the causality figures.
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