Following the release of a video by Swedish whistleblower website Wikileaks showing the indiscriminate shooting of civilians, including two Reuters journalists, by US Army helicopters, IPI calls on the US government to investigate the actions of the army personnel involved.

The video, which was released on Youtube and the Wikileaks website on Tuesday, involves footage filmed from an Apache helicopter, and shows an attack by US forces against a group of people in the streets of a suburb of Baghdad in July 2007. On the video, the soldiers in the Apache can be heard requesting, and receiving, permission to fire on a group of people in the street below, and then firing again on the occupants of a van which tried to collect the bodies of those shot, and help the victims.

Two of those shot were Reuters employees – photographer Namir Noor Eldeen and driver Saeed Chmagh. According to the Wikileaks website, Reuters had been trying unsuccessfully for two years to obtain the footage via the Freedom of Information Act.

According to the website, demands by Reuters resulted in an investigation by the US military which concluded that the soldiers had acted in accordance with its ‘Rules of Engagement.’ However, the military declined to release any information as to how the media personnel were killed.

The website claims to have received the footage from a number of ‘army whistleblowers’ and to have analyzed the footage to establish its authenticity.

The video, which can be viewed here and here, (WARNING: GRAPHIC IMAGES) has reopened the discussion about the safety of journalists in war zones. According to the IPI Death Watch, 125 journalists have died in Iraq since the beginning of the war in March 2003.

“This video raises a number of vital questions about the circumstances of the deaths of not only the two Reuters journalists, but also a number of civilians,” said IPI Director David Dadge. “It is also worrying that the US government has apparently sought to keep these videos from public view. The authorities must realise that, now more than ever, modern conflict is being reported upon in a way inconceivable in the past and that attempts to hide information from the public will only do harm to the reputation of the United States. Rather than refuse to face the unpalatable facts raised by this video, the US government would do better to confront them by holding an independent and transparent inquiry as befits a modern democracy.”

Wikileaks is a Sweden-registered website launched in 2007 which claims to be “a non-profit organization funded by human rights campaigners, investigative journalists, technologists and the general public” aimed at “expos(ing) significant injustice around the world— successfully fighting off over 100 legal attacks in the process.”