The Incident
Collateral Murder
The full story of the 2007 Baghdad airstrike and the leaked cockpit video that made the world watch it: what the footage shows, who died, a…
The Baghdad airstrike behind the Collateral Murder video
On a summer morning in eastern Baghdad, a US Army Apache crew opened fire on a group of men in the street. Two of them worked for Reuters. Nearly three years later a leaked cockpit video made the world watch it happen. This site keeps the whole record in one place: what the footage shows, who was there, what the Army found, and what happened to the people who made it public.
12 July 2007The morning of the airstrike in Al-Amin al-Thaniyah
2Reuters staff killed: Namir Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh
39 minsLength of the full cockpit video WikiLeaks published
5 April 2010The day the edited version was shown in Washington
Begin here
Six pages that carry the weight of the story. Everything else in the archive hangs off these.
The 2026 Iran War
The Minab School Airstrike, 28 February 2026
Two missiles, minutes apart, on a school in southern Iran. The second hit the room where the survivors had been taken. This is what is esta…
Collateral Killings in History
The Biggest Collateral Killings in History
An index of the incidents people argue about when they argue about civilian deaths in war, what happened in each, and what became of the in…
The Incident
An Analysis of Collateral Murder
A careful reading of what the footage does and does not show, phase by phase, and where the honest disagreements actually sit.
The Incident
Timeline of Events
Every dated event in this story in order, from the surge that put American infantry in the district to the plea deal that closed the case s…
The Incident
Collateral Murder Primary Sources and Documents
The documents, reports and archives this whole site rests on, with a plain guide to which ones are worth your time and what each one can an…
The people
Names matter more than numbers here. These are the people the record is about, on every side of it.
Namir Noor-Eldeen
Reuters photographer, killedAn Iraqi photojournalist on contract to Reuters, and by 22 already one of the agency's most-used photographer…
Saeed Chmagh
Reuters driver and assistant, killedA Reuters driver and fixer with four children. He survived the first burst, and was crawling at the kerb when…
Saleh Matasher Tomal
Driver of the van, killedHe was driving his two children through the district when he saw a wounded man at the roadside and stopped. H…
The other men in the street
Killed in the first engagementBetween six and nine other men were killed in the first burst of cannon fire. Most have never been publicly n…
Those killed in the third engagement
Killed by Hellfire missilesRoughly half an hour after the first burst, the same crew fired three Hellfire missiles into a partly built r…
Sajad and Doaha Salih
Children wounded in the vanSaleh Matasher Tomal's son and daughter. Both were in the front of the van when it was fired on, and both sur…
What happened that morning
The airstrike had three separate phases. They are often collapsed into one, which is where most of the confusion about the video comes from.
Reuters staff go to the district to report
Namir Noor-Eldeen, a 22-year-old photographer, and Saeed Chmagh, a 40-year-old driver and assistant, travel into Al-Amin al-Thaniyah to cover the fighting. Neither is wearing press identification visible from the air. Read more.
Two Apaches are sent to support the ground troops
A pair of AH-64 Apache helicopters, callsigns Crazyhorse 1-8 and Crazyhorse 1-9, are working overhead in support of the infantry on the ground. The lead aircraft's gun camera is recording. Read more.
The first burst of 30mm cannon fire
The crew report a group of men, identify what they take to be weapons including an RPG, ask for and receive clearance, and fire. Namir Noor-Eldeen and at least seven others are killed in seconds. Read more.
Saeed Chmagh is seen alive and crawling
One wounded man is visible dragging himself along the kerb. The crew watch him for several minutes and say on the radio that they want him to pick up a weapon so they can fire again. Read more.
A van stops to help and is fired on
A civilian van pulls up. Men get out and begin lifting the wounded man. The crew ask for clearance to engage and fire into the van, killing the driver, Saleh Matasher Tomal, and Saeed Chmagh, and badly wounding two children inside. Read more.
US soldiers reach the scene and find the children
Ground troops from Bravo Company arrive. Specialist Ethan McCord finds two wounded children in the front of the van and carries them out to be evacuated. Read more.
Latest from the archive
Newly written and newly revised pages.
The 2026 Iran War
Minab and Baghdad: The Same Shape, Nineteen Years Apart
A van in 2007, a prayer hall in 2026. What the two events share, where they differ, and what the difference says about whether anything has…
The 2026 Iran War
Who Was Responsible for the Minab Strike
A missile identified by its wings, a set of outdated coordinates, four independent investigations and a UN finding of war crimes. What has …
Collateral Killings in History
The Bombing of Dresden, 13 to 15 February 1945
A city centre destroyed in a firestorm, and a death toll that was inflated for decades by people with reasons to inflate it. The case that …
Collateral Killings in History
The Tokyo Firebombing, 9 to 10 March 1945
The deadliest air raid ever flown, five months before Hiroshima, using ordinary bombs. Barely remembered, and central to understanding the …
Collateral Killings in History
The Atomic Bombing of Nagasaki, 9 August 1945
The second bomb, three days later, on a city that was not the intended target and was spared by weather that morning somewhere else.
Collateral Killings in History
The Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima, 6 August 1945
The largest death toll ever produced by one weapon in one moment, and the case that forces this index to admit a third category.
Collateral Killings in History
Bloody Sunday in Derry, 30 January 1972
Fourteen unarmed civilians killed at a march, an inquiry that cleared the soldiers within weeks, and a second inquiry thirty-eight years la…
The War Around It
Civilian Impact of Modern Warfare Explained
Why wars fought with precise weapons still kill large numbers of civilians, and why the answer has more to do with cities and information t…
The War Around It
Timeline of Key Events in the Iraq War
The war in outline, from the 2003 invasion to the 2011 withdrawal, with the points that matter for understanding one morning in July 2007.
Browse by topic
Six sections, each with a hub page and the articles that sit under it.
The Incident
What happened in the sky and on the street in New Baghdad on 12 July 2007, phase by phase.
Whistleblowers and Journalists
The people who were killed doing journalism, and the people who risked everything to make the footage public.
WikiLeaks and the Release
How the footage got out, how it was published, and what it did to the idea of a government secret.
Courts and Consequences
Court-martials, indictments, extradition hearings and the question nobody has answered: who was held responsible?
Ethics and the Media
What a camera in a gunsight does to an audience, and what news organisations owe the people in the frame.
The War Around It
Baghdad in 2007, the surge, the counting of the dead, and why one morning in one district looked the way it did.
The 2026 Iran War
The war that began on 28 February 2026, and the strike on a girls' school in Minab that became its defining atrocity.
Collateral Killings in History
The incidents that set the terms for how civilian deaths in war are counted, argued about and answered for.
Every claim here points at something you can check
This site does not host the footage and does not ask you to take its word for anything. Each page lists the records it rests on: the Army's own investigation, court filings, the Reuters statements, the reporting of the day. Where accounts conflict, the page says who says what instead of picking a winner. Where a figure is an estimate, it is labelled as one.
