Cairo – An insurgent group that has claimed responsibility for the downing Tuesday of a U.S. helicopter in Baghdad, Iraq, that killed five Americans posted a video Thursday on an Islamic website showing the wreckage and two bodies.
The 1-minute, 14-second video carried the logo of the 1920 Revolution Brigades, a Sunni militant group. It showed wreckage of a helicopter with bricks scattered around it. The naked bodies of two men, one with gray hair and the other with dark hair, were seen near the wreckage.
“Our heroes were able to shoot the film of the helicopter wreckage after they downed it over a roof of a house of a citizen,” said a statement from the group.
Iraqi and U.S. officials said earlier that four of the five Americans who died in the downing of a U.S. security company’s helicopter in a dangerous Sunni neighborhood in central Baghdad were shot in the head execution-style – though it was unclear if they were alive when shot. The two bodies shown in the video had no visible wounds.
Another militant group, Ansar al-Sunnah Army, which also has claimed responsibility for downing the helicopter, said in a statement posted Wednesday on an Islamic website that its fighters “rushed toward the crash of the helicopter while under fire from a second (U.S.) helicopter and killed three U.S. soldiers.”
The authenticity of the two statements could not be verified.
The helicopter, owned by Blackwater USA, swooped into electrical wires and crashed after racing to help a U.S. Embassy ground convoy that had come under fire in the Sunni neighborhood. U.S. officials said it was not clear if gunfire brought down the aircraft or caused its pilot to veer into the wires during evasive maneuvers.
A second helicopter also was hit, but there were no casualties among its crew, a Washington official said.
The Ansar al-Sunnah Army posted with its statement an ID card it claimed was from a man who was in the helicopter. The card bore the name of Arthur Laguna, later identified by his mother as among those killed.
Laguna was a 52-year-old pilot for Blackwater, which provides security for State Department officials in Iraq, trains military units from around the world and works for corporate clients.
