July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike

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 ==

helicopters involved in the incident released by WikiLeaks. This video is from the editorialized version of Collateral Murder but has had the editorial removed. (Full audio transcript) Other video clips including the full 39-minute footage and clips corresponding to the Army report exhibits were also made available by WikiLeaks.|alt=Military helicopter video footage of civilian humans and vehicle being destroyed by airstrike. 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. 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. and repeated their request to shoot, before they received permission to begin firing on the van and its occupants. 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. Commentary WikiLeaks said in the preface to one of their videos of the incident that "some of the men appear to have been armed [although] the behavior of nearly everyone was relaxed" in the introductory text of the shorter video. Assange later said "Based upon visual evidence, I suspect there probably were AKs and an RPG, but I'm not sure that means anything". Greenwald called the second airstrike a "plainly unjustified killing of a group of unarmed men carrying away an unarmed, seriously wounded man to safety". 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: 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. 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. == 2007–2009 coverage ==

On the day of the attack the U.S. military reported that the two journalists were killed along with nine insurgents, and that the helicopter engagement was related to a U.S. troop raid force that had been attacked by small-arms fire and RPGs. Reuters reported that it could locate no witnesses who had seen gunmen in the immediate area. Reuters also stated that local police described the attack as "random American bombardment". Reuters requested a copy of the full video under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) on the same day. The Pentagon eventually blocked the FOIA request despite several follow-up requests by Reuters. An internal legal review by staff at Forward Operating Base Loyalty in Iraq during July 2007 stated that the helicopters had attacked armed insurgents within the rules of engagement, and that in an apparent case of civilian casualties two reporters working for Reuters had also been killed. The review was not released in full until 2010, after the video of the incident had been released by WikiLeaks. After the U.S. military concluded that the actions of the soldiers were in accordance with the law of armed conflict and its own "Rules of Engagement", WikiLeaks released the classified Rules of Engagement for 2006, 2007 and 2008, revealing the rules before, during, and after the attacks. Washington Post reporter David Finkel, who at the time was embedded with Bravo Company 2–16 Infantry, later covered the incidents of the day in his book, The Good Soldiers. At a February 2013 pretrial hearing, Manning stated that Finkel "was quoting, I feel in verbatim, the audio communications of the aerial weapons team crew". She said that she was "aghast" at Finkel's portrayal of the incident. "Reading his account," she explained, "one would believe the engagement was somehow justified as 'payback' for an earlier attack that led to the death of a soldier." == Coverage from 2010 ==

Leaked video footage The footage was released by the nonprofit media organization WikiLeaks during an April 5 press conference at the US National Press Club, and subsequently on a designated website titled Collateral Murder. WikiLeaks stated that the footage shows the "murder of Iraqi civilians and two Reuters journalists". Colbert asked "So 'Collateral Murder' is to get political impact?" Assange responded: Reactions to the video footage On 19 April 2010, Ethan McCord, who appears on the ground in the video, and Josh Steiber, a member of the same company who was not present on the day, wrote an open Letter of Reconciliation & Responsibility to the Iraqi People apologising for the events in the video. They wrote that: Ahlam Abdelhussein Tuman, the widow of the man who had been driving the van, and the mother of the children McCord had carried out, responded to the open letter in 2010: Bill Keller of The New York Times wrote, "But in its zeal to make the video a work of antiwar propaganda, WikiLeaks also released a version that didn't call attention to an Iraqi who was toting a rocket-propelled grenade and packaged the manipulated version under the tendentious rubric Collateral Murder." Captain Jack Hanzlik, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command stated that the airstrike video "gives you a limited perspective, [it] only tells you a portion of the activity that was happening that day. Just from watching that video, people cannot understand the complex battles that occurred. You are seeing only a very narrow picture of the events". Hanzlik said images gathered during a military investigation of the incident show multiple weapons around the dead bodies in the courtyard, including at least three RPGs. "Our forces were engaged in combat all that day with individuals that fit the description of the men in that video. Their age, their weapons, and the fact that they were within the distance of the forces that had been engaged made it apparent these guys were potentially a threat." Gates stated: "They're in a combat situation. The video doesn't show the broader picture of the firing that was going on at American troops. It's obviously a hard thing to see. It's painful to see, especially when you learn after the fact what was going on. But you—you talked about the fog of war. These people were operating in split second situations.". Assange said that Finkel had seen the video and that at least one individual at the offices of The Washington Post had a copy of the video for at least a year, prior to its release by WikiLeaks. The Washington Post has denied having any copy of the unedited video prior to WikiLeaks release of their edited version, and Finkel (who was on book leave from The Washington Post at the time) said that he has never made any statement about his sources for the story, except that it was "sourced ... from unclassified information and my presence in the area that day". Interviews with Ethan McCord Ethan McCord, the soldier seen in the video carrying the injured boy, recalled in an interview on The Marc Steiner Show that on arrival at the scene, "The first thing I did was run up to the van". After attending to the girl's wounds and handing her to a medic, McCord was ordered to take position on the roof but he returned to the van to find the boy moving his hand. "I grabbed him and ran to the Bradley myself". McCord states he was yelled at for not "pulling security". "The first thing I thought of ... was my children at home". He later sought help for psychological trauma, but was ridiculed by his NCO and told that if he were to go to the mental health officer, "there would be repercussions". McCord discussed his experience in the battle in an interview with the World Socialist Web Site on April 28, 2010, stating, "What happened then was not an isolated incident. Stuff like that happens on a daily basis in Iraq." McCord also recalled being ordered to "kill every motherfucker on the street" in the event of an attack on their convoy. Describing doubts over his initial enthusiasm in Iraq, McCord said that "I didn't understand why people were throwing rocks at us, why I was being shot at and why we're being blown up, when I have it in my head that I was here to help these people. ... The first real serious doubt, where I could no longer justify to myself being in Iraq or serving in the Army, was on that day in July 2007." When interviewed by Wired, McCord stated that he supported WikiLeaks in releasing the video, with some qualifications: "When it was first released I don't think it was done in the best manner that it could have been. They were stating that these people had no weapons whatsoever, that they were just carrying cameras. In the video, you can clearly see that they did have weapons ... to the trained eye." McCord added, "I don't say that Wikileaks did a bad thing, because they didn't. ... I think it is good that they're putting this stuff out there. I don't think that people really want to see this, though, because this is war. ... It's very disturbing." James Spione made a short documentary film about the airstrikes called Incident in New Baghdad, featuring a first-person account from Ethan McCord. It was nominated as a Documentary Short Subject for the 84th Academy Awards. == Arrest, convictions and sentencing of Manning ==

(then known as Bradley Manning) in 2012 In May 2010, a 22-year-old American Army intelligence analyst, Chelsea Manning (then known as Bradley Manning), was arrested after telling hacker Adrian Lamo she had leaked the airstrike video, along with a video of the Granai massacre and around 260,000 diplomatic cables, to WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks said they were unable to confirm whether or not Manning was the source of the video, stating "we never collect personal information on our sources", but saying that "if [Manning is the] whistleblower then, without doubt, [s]he's a national hero" and "we have taken steps to arrange for [her] protection and legal defence". Her trial on the remaining charges began on June 3, 2013. On July 30, Manning was acquitted of the most serious charge, that of aiding the enemy, for giving secrets to WikiLeaks. In addition to five or six espionage counts, she was also found guilty of five theft specifications, two computer fraud specifications and multiple military infractions. On August 21, 2013, Manning was sentenced to 35 years' imprisonment, reduction in rank from private first class to private, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and a dishonorable discharge. Pursuant to a commutation by President Obama, Chelsea Manning was released on May 17, 2017. == Legality of the attacks ==

In a June 7, 2010, article in The New Yorker, Raffi Khatchadourian addressed several issues involved in determining the legality of the attacks, including "proportionality", "positive identification" ("reasonable certainty" that the target has hostile intent), and "the treatment of casualties during an ongoing military operation". An article at Gawker stated that Reuters reporter Luke Baker had written an article claiming that the airstrikes may have been war crimes, but Reuters refused to run the story. Reuters responded, "It is absolutely untrue that this story was spiked. It was sent back for more reporting in an effort to incorporate a wider range of experts. The story was then overtaken by a more updated one out of Washington that incorporated reporting from the original piece." == Military legal review ==

On April 5, 2010, the same day as the release of the video footage by WikiLeaks, the United States Central Command, which oversees the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, released a collection of documents including two investigative reports. Incident according to the report File:ArmyReport ExhibitA.png| "Cameramen and armed insurgents" (all captions from the Army report) File:ArmyReport ExhibitB.png| "Insurgents with RPG and AKM weapons" File:ArmyReport ExhibitC.png| "Cameraman peering around corner of wall" File:ArmyReport ExhibitO.png| "Pictures taken by ground forces after reaching the site" Attack on personnel and a van per U.S. Army report account According to the U.S. Army investigation report released by the United States Central Command, the engagement started at 10:20 Iraqi local time and ended at 10:41. The report claims that a unit from Bravo Company 2–16 was within 100 meters of the individuals that were fired upon with 30 mm AH-64 Apache cannons. The company was charged with clearing their sector of any small armed forces and had been under fire from small arms and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs). The company was supported by two Apache helicopters from the 1st Cavalry Division's Aviation Brigade, call signs "Crazyhorse 1/8" and "Crazyhorse 1/9". Two men were identified by Crazyhorse 1/8 as carrying an RPG launcher and an AKM or AK-47. While the Air Weapons Team was providing support at the first engagement area they were informed by ground troops that they were receiving small arms fire from the south/southwest. The crew for Crazyhorse 1/8 then located multiple individuals with weapons about 400 meters east of coalition forces and was given clearance to engage the targets. However, the co-pilot/gunner then observed a child and some other non-combatants in the vicinity of the individuals and decided to hold off on the engagement until the non-combatants were clear. After the non-combatants were clear Crazyhorse 1/8 engaged the targets. The crew for Crazyhorse 1/9 could not engage due to target obfuscation from buildings and dust. The military did not include the attack on the building in their report. Julian Assange's comments regarding U.S. Army report Assange responded to the investigation report released by the Army in an interview with Democracy Now!, stating that "the tone and language is all about trying to find an excuse for the activity. ... It's very clear that this is the approach, to try and find any mechanism to excuse the behavior, and that is what ended up happening." == Awards ==

In May 2011, the Barcelona Human Rights Film Festival awarded the investigative film Collateral murder, Hellfire, done by Kristinn Hrafnsson, WikiLeaks spokesperson, and Ingi Ingason, with the award for International Journalism and Human Rights. In June 2011, the Federation of German Scientists (VDW) awarded the "Whistleblower Award" to the person who made the video Collateral Murder public via WikiLeaks. == Media representations ==

• ''The War You Don't See'', a 2010 feature-length documentary film directed and presented by Australian journalist John Pilger, opens with the WikiLeaks footage of the attack. • British musician M.I.A. used the WikiLeaks footage of the attack in visualisers for her 2010 mixtape Vicki Leekx, which were posted to her YouTube account in February 2011. • Incident in New Baghdad, a 2011 Oscar-nominated short documentary film about the Baghdad airstrike. • We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks, a 2013 feature-length documentary film directed by Alex Gibney, includes the WikiLeaks footage of the attack. • Documentary: Permission to Engage : "Collateral Murder" through the eyes of victims' families. • Interview with Ethan McCord • Representation (including audio) by Banksy, October 9, 2013. Part of Banksy's Better Out Than In month-long artwork series on the streets of New York City. • The Source, a 2014 oratorio by Ted Hearne, included footage of the airstrike, as well as the faces of people reacting to it. • Risk, a 2016 documentary on WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, included the footage in its discussion • Line in the Sand, a 2023 book by Reuters bureau chief Dean Yates about his struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder after his staff were killed in the attack. == See also ==