DUBAI - Iraqi militants who claimed the downing of a US helicopter issued a video apparently showing parts of the wreckage, Al Jazeera television said on Monday.
It aired the footage from the Rashedeen Army, which appeared to show part of the helicopter’s fuselage and rotor lying in a field. The video also showed helicopters circling the site.
Al Jazeera said it could not authenticate the video.
The US military said on Monday that two of its pilots died after their helicopter crashed in southwest of Baghdad on Saturday. The Rashedeen Army had claimed the shooting near the town of Yusufiya, an area that sees considerable Sunni insurgent activity just southwest of the capital.
Insurgents have shot down several military helicopters since the US-led invasion in 2003 and losses of heavy troop carriers have accounted for some of the largest casualty figures.
VIDEO PURPORTS TO SHOW DRAGGING OF PILOT
CAIRO, Egypt - An extremist group posted an Internet video Wednesday that it said showed a U.S. pilot being dragged along the ground, burning, after the crash of his Apache helicopter. The video, posted by a group that called itself the Shura Council of Mujahedeen, claimed that its military wing had shot down the craft, which the U.S. military said went down Saturday.
The footage in the video, which was e-mailed to reporters and posted on the Internet, was blurry but the helicopter could be clearly seen. It was not clear if the man being dragged in the video was wearing a U.S. military uniform.
But the extremist group, in audio and a statement attached to the video, said he was a U.S. helicopter pilot.
Separately, the U.S. military in Baghdad announced Wednesday that it had confirmed the two pilots in the downed helicopter had died, and said it had recovered "all available remains found on the scene, given the catastrophic nature of the crash."
The military statement said that although "reports of a web site video suggest that terrorists removed part of a body from the crash site, the authenticity of the video cannot be confirmed."
"We are outraged that anyone would create and publish such a despicable video for public exposure," said Lt. Col. Jonathan Withington, a spokesman for the U.S. miltary.
The AH-64D Apache Longbow crashed due to possible hostile fire west of Yousifiyah while conducting a combat air patrol, the military said.
And those chopper crews didn't hose the thugs who were desecrating their comrade's body? We should have created a 200-meter zone of annihilation surrounding the crashed bird...