Questions people actually ask
Short, direct answers. Every one links to the page where the same thing is set out at length, with the record it rests on.
What it is
What actually is Collateral Murder?
It is the title WikiLeaks gave to a US Army gun camera video it published on 5 April 2010. The recording was made from an Apache helicopter over eastern Baghdad on 12 July 2007 and shows three separate attacks in which somewhere between twelve and eighteen people were killed, including two Reuters staff. The title is WikiLeaks' characterisation of what the footage shows, not a court's finding. Read the full page.
When and where did the airstrike happen?
On the morning of 12 July 2007, in Al-Amin al-Thaniyah, a residential district of eastern Baghdad usually written in English as New Baghdad. American infantry were working the area on the ground and two Apache helicopters were overhead supporting them. Read the full page.
How many people were killed?
There is no single agreed number. Most counts land between twelve and eighteen across the three engagements. The first burst killed at least eight or nine, the attack on the van killed two more, and the number killed by the missiles fired into the building has never been settled. Read the full page.
The people
Who were the two journalists?
Namir Noor-Eldeen, a 22-year-old Iraqi photographer working for Reuters, and Saeed Chmagh, a 40-year-old Reuters driver and assistant with four children. Namir was killed in the first burst. Saeed survived it, and was killed minutes later when the van that stopped to pick him up was fired on. Read the full page.
Were there children in the video?
Yes. Two children, a boy of about ten and a girl of about five, were in the front of the van their father stopped to help the wounded man. Both were badly hurt and both survived. An American soldier, Ethan McCord, carried them out. Read the full page.
What is disputed
Did the aircrew know they were shooting at journalists?
There is no evidence that they did. The crew identified what they took to be weapons, including a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, and a long camera lens carried at the shoulder does resemble a weapon through a gunsight at that distance. Whether the identification was reasonable is precisely what people disagree about. Read the full page.
Why was the van fired on?
The crew reported that people were collecting bodies and possibly weapons, asked for clearance and received it. Critics point out that the men were unarmed, that they were picking up a wounded man, and that the law generally protects those who collect the wounded. This is the phase of the morning that draws the strongest legal criticism. Read the full page.
Was the airstrike found to be illegal?
No. A US Army AR 15-6 investigation completed in 2007 concluded the crews had acted within the rules of engagement on the information available to them. No criminal charge was ever brought against anyone involved. Many lawyers and human rights organisations disagree with that conclusion, but disagreement is not a ruling. Read the full page.
The leak
Who leaked the video?
Chelsea Manning, then a 22-year-old US Army intelligence analyst known as Bradley Manning, serving at a base east of Baghdad. She found the file on a classified network and sent it to WikiLeaks along with hundreds of thousands of other documents. Read the full page.
How was Manning caught?
Through a series of online conversations in May 2010 with Adrian Lamo, a former hacker Manning had begun confiding in. Lamo passed the logs to the US Army and the FBI, and Manning was arrested in Iraq on 26 May 2010. Read the full page.
What happened to Chelsea Manning?
She was convicted at court-martial in July 2013 on multiple counts including violations of the Espionage Act, and acquitted of aiding the enemy. She was sentenced to 35 years. President Obama commuted almost all of the remaining sentence in January 2017 and she was released that May, after seven years in custody. Read the full page.
The courts
What happened to Julian Assange?
He spent seven years inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London, was arrested in April 2019, and was then held in Belmarsh prison for five years while the United States tried to extradite him on Espionage Act charges. In June 2024 he pleaded guilty to one count, was sentenced to the time he had already served, and flew home to Australia. Read the full page.
Did anyone face charges over the deaths themselves?
No. Nobody in the aircraft, and nobody in the chain of command, has ever been criminally charged over what happened on 12 July 2007. The only people prosecuted in connection with this video are the person who leaked it and the person who published it. Read the full page.
The release
Why does the short version of the video matter so much?
WikiLeaks released two files at once: a full recording of about thirty-nine minutes, and an edited version of about seventeen minutes with captions and a framing quotation. Nearly everyone saw the short one. Critics argue the edit removed context; WikiLeaks' answer was that the full file was published at the same moment and anyone could watch it. Read the full page.
Did the video exist in public before WikiLeaks released it?
The footage did not, but an account of the engagement did. A reporter embedded with the same battalion published a book in 2009 that described this attack and quoted the cockpit radio traffic. That is strong evidence the recording and its transcript were available inside the military long before they leaked. Read the full page.
Why did Reuters never get the footage?
It asked, repeatedly, from the day after its staff were killed and then formally under freedom-of-information law for almost three years. The requests were refused, delayed or answered without the recording. The agency only saw the video when WikiLeaks published it. Read the full page.
About this site
Is this website connected to WikiLeaks?
No. This domain was used by WikiLeaks for the 2010 release and is now an independent archive with no link to that organisation, to Reuters, to any government or to any legal team. What we are and are not is set out in full on the about page.
Can I watch the video on this site?
No. This archive does not host or embed the footage. It describes what the recording contains and points to where it is published. Two reasons: people died on camera in it, and their families did not consent to it being everywhere.
If you only read one thing
The shortest accurate summary
On 12 July 2007 a US Army Apache crew opened fire three separate times in a residential district of eastern Baghdad. Between twelve and eighteen people were killed, including two Reuters staff, and two children were badly wounded. An internal Army investigation cleared the crew. Nobody has ever been charged. The two people punished in connection with it are the analyst who leaked the recording and the publisher who released it. The full account is here.
Where to go next
- The day itself, in order.
- What the footage does and does not show.
- Everyone named in the record.
- Claims that do not hold up, from both directions.