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One of the internet's biggest sources of classified government information has released video of a US helicopter firing at civilians in Iraq.
WikiLeaks, a website that publishes anonymously sourced documents, released what it called previously unseen footage on Monday.
It said the footage filmed from a helicopter cockpit shows a missile strike and shooting on a crowded square in a Baghdad neighborhood in July 2007.
The website said 12 civilians were killed in the attack, including two journalists, Namir Nour El Deen and Saeed Chmagh, who worked for the Reuters news agency.
The two men appear to survive the first strike and attempt to get away, but the helicopter returns a second and third time.
The Pentagon has not officially commented on the video and Al Jazeera's Patty Culhane, reporting from Washington, said military officials seemed "completely surprised" when informed of the release of the tape, and appeared not to have heard about the footage beforehand.
But she said Pentagon officials indicated to Al Jazeera that there was no reason to doubt the authenticity of the tape.
She added that the results of two Pentagon investigations given to her cleared the air crew of any "wrongdoing".
A statement from the two probes said the air crew "had acted appropriately and followed the rules of engagement".
According to the probes, the air crew "had reason to believe the people seen in the video were fighters before opening fire", she said.
They added that "it was not until after the fact that the soldiers knew there were reporters at the scene and could have even guessed that the people were carrying cameras and not weapons."
In the video, a voice can be heard saying there has been a shooting in the area. The unidentified person later receives permission to open fire.
Following the shooting, the footage shows troops carrying two injured children, as another unidentified person asks for permission to take the wounded out of the area.
A voice responds, saying, "Well, it's their fault for bringing their kids into a battle."
'Military whistleblowers'
Julian Assange, the editor of WikiLeaks.org, said there was strong evidence to suggest the video was genuine.
"There was a Washington Post reporter who was with that US military unit on the ground on that day," Assange told Al Jazeera, referring to David Finkel, a journalist who was embedded with the US military in July 2007.
"He wrote a chapter in a book, which was published last year, called The Good Soldiers, which correlates directly to the material in that video.
"Also, Reuters conducted a number of investigations and interviewed two ground witnesses at the time.
"That story wasn't really taken seriously, [with] nothing to back up the witnesses, but now we have the video that shows that those witnesses were correct."
WikiLeaks set up a separate website with detailed information on the video, which it said it obtained from a number of "military whistleblowers".
"WikiLeaks goes to great lengths to verify the authenticity of the information it receives," the website read.
"We have analyzed the information about this incident from a variety of source material. We have spoken to witnesses and journalists directly involved in the incident."
PHOTO CAPTION
This image captured from a classified U.S. military video footage shows Iraqis being shot from an U.S. Apache helicopters that killed a dozen people in Baghdad, including two Reuters news staff on July 12, 2007, and released to Reuters on April 5, 2010 by WikiLeaks, a group that promotes leaking to fight government and corporate corruption.
Al-Jazeera
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