After Massacre, Aerial Recording Caught U.S. Soldier's Return KABUL, Afghanistan - The American soldier accused of killing 16 Afghan civilians, mostly children and women, was recorded on surveillance video returning to his military outpost in southern Afghanistan after the attack, according to an Afghan government official who saw the video. The video appears to back up American officials" insistence that there was only one gunman. Early Sunday morning, when military officials realized that the soldier was missing, commanders at the outpost started to scan the surrounding terrain from a surveillance balloon, commonly used by foreign forces here to monitor insurgent activity. The black-and-white video shows the soldier, an Army staff sergeant, walking by himself back to the outpost, Camp Belambi in the Panjwai district in Kandahar. At that point the soldiers at the base did not know about the massacre, the Afghan official said he was told. The sergeant surrendered to waiting soldiers, who disarmed him and took him away, , the Afghan official said. Military officials say the other soldiers seen by villagers followed later when a rescue force with helicopters was sent out to ferry the wounded to a nearby military hospital. Details are still emerging about the sergeant, in custody at the Kandahar air base. A 38-year-old married father of two, he served with the Third Stryker Brigade, Second Infantry Division, and was based at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, a major Army and Air Force installation near Tacoma, Wash. The Associated Press has reported that he had been trained as a sniper and suffered a head injury in a noncombat-related vehicle accident during a recent tour of duty in Iraq, his third. He was sent to Afghanistan in December. The Seattle Times reported that, while most of the Third Brigade is serving in Zabul Province, he was assigned on Feb. 1 to a special operations team at the small outpost of Camp Belambi, in neighboring Kandahar Province. Many camps across Afghanistan have been fitted with surveillance balloons, which float above the camps from a tether and can transmit live images from as far away as 20 miles. The blimplike spy balloons are part of a new push to help the military get an earlier warning of insurgent activity, for example homemade roadside bombs being planted. Graham Bowley reported from Kabul and Taimoor Shah from Kandahar, Afghanistan.