Raw footage of battle from Taliban fighters....
NEFA Foundation Senior Investigator Claudio Franco obtained this exceptionally important video, consisting of raw footage filmed by a Taliban fighter during the Wanat-Kamdesh battle. The video follows the progress of the battle from early morning, when the firefight first broke out at around 4:45am, until the point at which a Taliban squad appears to approach the perimeter of the U.S. outpost.
In an exclusive interview that the NEFA Foundation will release at a later stage, Maulvi Manibullah describes how a thirty-strong suicide squad attempted to penetrate the perimeter of the outpost wreaking havoc among US troops, while approximately 150 Taliban fighters were attacking the base from 4 sides.
The video also depicts the Taliban fighters' exploration of the U.S. base, which was finally abandoned by U.S. forces only days after the Wanat-Kamdesh battle.
In the early hours of July 13 2008, the insurgents attacked the U.S. outpost from four sides using machine guns, mortar fire, and RPGs. The Mujahideen descended toward the outpost and the village to the West of the U.S. base while a different group attacked the base's observation post from farmland to the east. The attack then concentrated on the outpost's observation post situated 75 meters from the main base; nine soldiers were killed there. Coalition troops responded with machine gun fire and grenades and soldiers from the main base resupplied the observation post three times. The Taliban briefly breached the perimeter of the observation post before being driven back. After an hour of intense fighting, only one U.S. soldier survived reportedly, and fought alone until support arrived. U.S. forces were eventually able to repel the attack when AH 64 attack helicopters and a Predator UAV provided air-support, although the helicopters also came under heavy fire.
This exceptionally important video documents for the first time the dynamics of a Taliban assault on a U.S. outpost in Afghanistan, demonstrating the degree of organization and motivation achieved by Taliban fighters in the last few years.
This video is an excerpt from the 55 minutes of raw video retrieved by the NEFA Foundation.
