Video Adds to Mystery of Drug Mission in Honduras WASHINGTON - Aerial surveillance video of a fatal shootout during a counternarcotics mission in Honduras last month shows a long, dugout-style boat ramming a smaller canoe carrying Honduran and American agents - and a seized cocaine shipment - followed by a brief but furious round of gunfire. The video answers some questions while raising new ones about a mission that put a spotlight on intensifying American involvement in counternarcotics operations in Central America. The incident unfolded on a river near the town of Ahuas after a drug smuggling plane being tracked from Venezuela landed at an airstrip and its cargo was unloaded and taken to a boat. American helicopters carrying Honduran police officers and a commando-style squad of agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration swooped in and seized the cocaine. Shortly thereafter, a firefight erupted in which four Hondurans in another boat were killed. Officials in both countries have insisted that no American agent fired a weapon in the exchange, but there have been differing accounts about whether the casualties were bystanders or were part of the smuggling operation. It has not previously been reported that the matter began with one boat ramming a second one. Still, the video does not resolve the identities or motive of those aboard the boat that collided with the vessel carrying the agents, and who may have fired upon them. Nor does it explain the otherwise contradictory statements of some survivors of the shooting that they were innocent villagers attacked without cause. But the video appears to have satisfied Congressional staff members that the American agents on the raid did not fire their weapons. "There was no issue that made us think that D.E.A. had done something that was questionable," said a senior aide on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who watched the video. The video was taken from a United States Customs and Border Protection P-3 surveillance aircraft, and has been circulating among government agencies - and shown in briefings to Congressional aides - for the past several weeks. The New York Times was allowed to view the video by a person who was not officially authorized to release it because it remains evidence in a sensitive law enforcement inquiry. It shows that within minutes after the cargo was loaded onto the canoe-style boat on the river at a communal dock, four helicopters appeared above the village, kicking up clouds of dust. They dropped flares, and Honduran and American drug agents dropped by rope to the ground. The smugglers scattered, abandoning the boat, which began to drift. Three figures, identified by officials as two Honduran policemen and one D.E.A. agent, boarded the boat. One, identified as the American agent, moved to one end of the craft and began working to get the motor started. As the surveillance aircraft and the helicopters circled, a similar but larger river craft approached and was the only other vessel that can be seen along that swath of river. Several people were standing in the front and back. There was a shadowy place in the middle, which could have been a tarp covering people or cargo, a bench or an empty space. The second boat, clearly under power, cut a zigzag course along the river toward the boat carrying the Honduran and American agents, ramming one end. In the seconds before contact, there were some flashes in the video, which American officials said were indications that the occupants of the larger boat had fired. After the ramming, a brief but ferocious flurry of shots from the boat carrying the agents was clearly visible. As the larger boat slid alongside and then moved away, there also appeared to be a spray of bullets across its middle, said by officials to be a volley of machine-gun fire from the Honduran door gunner aboard one of the helicopters. Later that day, Honduran security officials announced the raid, saying that two drug traffickers had been killed in a shootout and that three other men had escaped by leaping into the water from a canoe carrying cocaine. They apparently omitted any mention that Americans were involved. But that account soon came under question when the mayor of Ahuas told Honduran reporters, and later repeated to The Times, that helicopters carrying Honduran and American drug agents had been pursuing a boat with smugglers when the government forces mistakenly opened fire on another boat carrying villagers who were fishing, killing four, including two pregnant women. Disputing the mayor's version, American and Honduran officials briefed on the matter said that after a joint team had landed and taken control of a boatload of drugs, a second boat approached and fired upon them. The Honduran police and a helicopter door gunner returned fire and the second boat withdrew, they said. Another account was provided to a Times reporter who visited Ahuas and was shown a long blue boat with about half a dozen bullet holes. The reporter talked with three witnesses, including a woman in the local hospital with bullet wounds in both legs, Hilda Lezama, who identified herself as the owner of the boat. Ms. Lezama said she and her husband were running a river taxi service, bringing 11 passengers on a six-hour boat ride from a larger town on the coast upriver and traveling at night because it was not as hot. Just before 3 a.m., they went ashore and had begun to climb onto land when four helicopters appeared overhead and they came under gunfire, she said. Damien Cave contributed reporting from Vero Beach, Fla.