C-130 Shoot Down Video is Bogus
Posted 2-3-2005 at 02:55 AM
A video purportedly showing the moment a British military airplane was shot down by Iraqi insurgents is almost certainly bogus, say defence specialists who studied the footage.
The Royal Air Force C-130 Hercules crashed 40 kilometres north-west of Baghdad at 1340 GMT on Sunday, killing all 10 military personnel on board. The plane is thought to have been carrying Special Forces troops to a base in the north of the country. On Tuesday, the British Prime Minister Tony Blair expressed his "sympathy and condolences" to the families of those killed.
But the circumstances surrounding the crash remain hazy and on Monday the Arabic television station Al-Jazeera aired a video allegedly showing the aeroplane being destroyed by a missile.
The footage was supplied by an insurgent group calling itself the 1920 Revolutionary Brigade, which also claimed responsibility for bringing down the aircraft. The video shows a missile being launched by remote control followed by a mid-air explosion and images of aircraft wreckage on the ground.
Defence experts say the wreckage seen in the video shown is consistent with that of a Hercules C-130, but dismiss the rest of the video as a crude propaganda attempt.
Full Story @
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6950
A video purportedly showing the moment a British military airplane was shot down by Iraqi insurgents is almost certainly bogus, say defence specialists who studied the footage.
The Royal Air Force C-130 Hercules crashed 40 kilometres north-west of Baghdad at 1340 GMT on Sunday, killing all 10 military personnel on board. The plane is thought to have been carrying Special Forces troops to a base in the north of the country. On Tuesday, the British Prime Minister Tony Blair expressed his "sympathy and condolences" to the families of those killed.
But the circumstances surrounding the crash remain hazy and on Monday the Arabic television station Al-Jazeera aired a video allegedly showing the aeroplane being destroyed by a missile.
The footage was supplied by an insurgent group calling itself the 1920 Revolutionary Brigade, which also claimed responsibility for bringing down the aircraft. The video shows a missile being launched by remote control followed by a mid-air explosion and images of aircraft wreckage on the ground.
Defence experts say the wreckage seen in the video shown is consistent with that of a Hercules C-130, but dismiss the rest of the video as a crude propaganda attempt.
Full Story @
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6950
