Image copyright AFP Image caption The widow of one of the troops killed later became embroiled in a row with US President Donald Trump

The Islamic State (IS) group has published a video purporting to show an ambush in Niger in which four US soldiers were killed last October.

It is not clear why the release of the video - via an IS outlet on messaging app Telegram - was delayed until now.

The video consists mainly of raw footage, including images apparently filmed using a helmet camera belonging to one of the soldiers.

The video seems to suggest that the attack was carried out by IS militants.

The deaths became a major political row in the US when the widow of one of the soldiers, Army Sgt La David Johnson, said President Donald Trump had made her cry during a condolence phone call by suggesting her husband "knew what he signed up for".

The president later called a US congresswoman's account of the phone call "totally fabricated".

What happens in the video?

The propaganda film begins with still images showing an alleged pledge of allegiance to IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi by members of the Sahel-based group Jamaat Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM).

JNIM was formed from a number of West African jihadist groups in March 2017, and originally had pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda.

This alleged switch to IS was reported last month by a number of analysts, but it had not been promoted by IS outlets on social media.

The graphic video shows several armed militants walking and running in a desert area, apparently heading for the ambush, reports BBC Monitoring.

The soldiers are seen driving away in a white vehicle, with coloured smoke grenades providing cover.

After a cut in the video, the US soldiers are seen around another vehicle, with one soldier driving and the other two walking beside while seemingly firing at their attackers.

Then, one of the soldiers drops to the ground. The man wearing the helmet camera tries to raise the fallen man.

The soldier driving the vehicle jumps out and helps drag the soldier to cover, before he and the camera-wearer run into the scrub.

While running, the soldier wearing the camera falls to the ground. The footage ends with the camera unmoving, and militants surrounding the soldier, firing at point-blank range.

Image copyright AFP/Getty Image caption La David Johnson, one of the US soldiers killed in the attack

What was the controversy over the deaths?

The deaths in Niger sparked controversy after President Donald Trump's phone call to the widow of Sgt La David Johnson.

Democratic congresswoman Frederica Wilson, who knew the soldier in question, heard the call while en route to meet his body with his family, and said the president did not seem to know his name.

President Trump denied forgetting Sgt Johnson's name in the call, saying he spoke it "without hesitation". He said it had been a "very nice conversation".

Sgt Johnson's body was initially located two days after the ambush, while the bodies of the other three soldiers were discovered on the same day they were attacked, on 4 October 2017.

Why is the US in Niger?

The US has about 800 troops in Niger, which they say are there to help train local forces and support counter-terrorism efforts.

But questions have emerged about why the US troops were not more heavily armed for the failed mission.

"We should have gotten this information a long time ago," Texas Congressman Marc Veasey told CBS News on Sunday.

"Why they were asked to continue to go onto this mission I think is something that we all need to find out."

The Pentagon is due to release the results of their investigation into the ambush as soon as this week, CBS reports.

This was the first time US troops were killed in combat in Niger.</s>An ISIL propaganda video showing the deadly ambush of American troops in Niger raised questions on Monday as to the nature of the mission and why the soldiers had been left so vulnerable.

The October 4 attack occurred as a unit of 12 American special forces soldiers and 30 Nigerien troops returned from the village of Tongo Tongo, near the border with Mali. They were targeted by a group of some 50 ISIL-affiliated fighters equipped with small arms, grenades, and trucks mounted with guns.

At least five Nigerien troops were killed along with four US soldiers in the attack.

The video, distributed by a pro-ISIL news agency, includes graphic footage taken by a solder wearing a helmet camera. It shows the chaos of the attack, including the solider wearing the camera being shot dead, with fighters stalking past his body.

The Pentagon "is aware of alleged photos and IS [Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant] propaganda video from the Oct 4, 2017 terrorist attack in Niger. The release of these materials demonstrates the depravity of the enemy we are fighting," it said in a statement.

The nine-minute video includes an image of ISIL leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and footage of pick-up trucks rolling through a desert landscape. One of the vehicles is flying an ISIL flag and other trucks are packed with what appear to be fighters.

The mission was supposed to be a low-risk patrol and the soldiers were clearly ill-equipped for the scale of the attack.

Footage shows the US troops wearing only light body armour, desperately seeking cover behind an unarmored SUV while coming under heavy fire.

In a frantic bid to find some sort of concealment, the troops deployed red smoke grenades but the parched landscape of scrub and dirt provided no effective cover.

At one point in the video, a US soldier is shot and a comrade attempts to pull him to cover behind the SUV. As their position is overrun, they have no choice but to try to run away, but there is nowhere to hide.

"Knowing that they were asked to try and complete and execute this type of mission with that type of equipment, I just could not believe it," Republican Congressman Marc Veasey told CBS news.

Questions remain about what intelligence failures may have occurred that allowed such a large attack, and why the soldiers did not get immediate back up or air support.

The Americans had been on a joint patrol with Nigerien counterparts they were training when they were ambushed by motorcycle-riding and car-driving gunmen in the Tillaberi region in the Niger's southwest.

Pentagon investigators have completed a probe into the incident, and that report is currently under review by defence chief James Mattis.</s>Washington - A graphic video apparently captured by the helmet camera of one of the US soldiers killed in an Islamic State ambush in Niger highlights the militants' depravity, the Pentagon said on Monday (Mar 5) after IS released the footage.

The Defense Department "is aware of alleged photos and IS propaganda video from the Oct 4, 2017 terrorist attack in Niger. The release of these materials demonstrates the depravity of the enemy we are fighting," the Pentagon said in a statement.

The nine-minute video includes a compilation of still and video footage, some of it IS and some American.

The video shows what appears to be the attack itself, which occurred as a unit of 12 American special forces soldiers and 30 Nigerien troops returned from the village of Tongo Tongo, near the border with Mali.

They were attacked by a group of some 50 fighters affiliated with IS and equipped with small arms, grenades and trucks mounted with guns.

The video shows distressing images of the attack and the soldier wearing the camera being shot to death.

It also depicts the body of at least one other American soldier.</s>The footage from the helmet camera shows the last moments of one of the American Special Forces killed in Niger in October 2017. As the soldier lies on his side, the camera points into the distance of scraggy bushes and baked sand-colored earth.



A black-clad jihadist walks into the frame. Then the camera shudders from bullets.





The footage was taken from the bodies of American Special Forces, repackaged into a propaganda film for ISIS, and months later, began to make its way into the hands of the media before being released online.In the video, the usual brutalities of ISIS are gone. Instead the extremists want to show a gun battle between their fighters who ambushed American and Niger forces near the town of Tongo Tongo. After some brief quotes from an old sermon by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the video shows images of jihadists in Africa. They are kitted out with trucks with mounted machine guns or “technical.” The men carry AK-47s and other small arms. They don’t wear camouflage or uniforms and don’t even seem to have much gear, such as tactical vests or helmets.The Americans were on a mission in northern Niger when their convoy was ambushed returning from Tongo Tongo.Four Americans were killed: St.- Sgt. Bryan Black, St.-Sgt. Jeremiah Johnson, St.-Sgt. Dustin Wright and Sgt. La David Johnson, whose body was found two days after the battle.The deaths of the Americans led to surprise in Washington.What were Americans doing in Niger? “I didn’t know there were 1,000 troops in Niger,” US Sen. Lindsey Graham admitted after the deaths. US media scrambled to take a “closer look” at what was going on. What America was doing was a “great mystery,” according to The New York Times, which sought to reconstruct the battle.IT SHOULDN’T have been a mystery. In May 2017, General Raymond Thomas III, commander of US Special Operations Command, told the US Senate Armed Services Committee that 8,000 of his 56,000 men and women were deployed to forward positions in 80 countries. He even mentioned “across the Sahel of Africa.”The Sahel includes Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad, Sudan and Eritrea. In several of those countries, Islamist insurgencies have percolated and even threatened central governments. So the American and French have gone bootson- the-ground to train partner forces. This is what the US called “by, with and through.” You train and equip the locals, like the US did in Iraq and Syria, and then the locals go kill jihadists.In Niger, things went wrong when a unit of 12 Americans from the 3rd Special Forces Group and 30 Niger soldiers went out on a reconnaissance near the border with Mali.On the way back, they were ambushed by dozens of ISIS fighters and other jihadists. Initial reports indicated that the attack included mortars and rocket-propelled grenades, and that the enemy burned trees to cloud the air from drones and used animals to screen their movements.The video that emerged in late February and was widely circulated online on March 4 doesn’t tell us everything about the battle. The ISIS propagandists spliced several different videos into the one they released. First they took their own video of their men before and after the battle. They then added still images of US forces training the Niger forces. They also took the helmet-cam footage they got from the dead Americans and spliced at least an hour’s worth of video into nine minutes.What the viewer sees is the initial contact between US Special Forces, who were riding in an SUV and in a white truck. At least six Americans can be seen in the footage. The video then cuts to the Special Forces as they are taking cover behind their vehicle, popping red smoke bombs to hide their movements.At first they seem confident and calm and the ambush doesn’t overwhelm them. However, once one of their comrades is wounded, things begin to fall apart.Eventually, two of the Americans make a run for it into the African bush and are both killed. The jihadists videoed the bodies of two of the slain Americans.They stripped the corpses of weapons, tactical vests, helmets and boots. Why steal the boots? Perhaps the jihadists were not as well-equipped as initially reported.WHAT THE video tells us is that ISIS and other organizations with which it works – such as al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb – are confident of success and familiar with the terrain. It exploits weak states and lawless border regions.One of the videos the group posted was titled “The soldiers of the khalifah ambush American soldiers near the artificial borders of Niger and Mali.”The “artificial” view of these borders is similar to how ISIS saw the Iraqi and Syrian borders.For them, these are colonial borders, not those of the “caliphate.”The ambush in Niger conjures up other instances of Americans being unexpectedly killed in far-away places, such as the Black Hawk Down incident in Mogadishu in 1993 and the raid on the US compound in Benghazi in 2012.The deaths of Special Forces has some commonality with Operation Red Wings, which cost the lives of US Navy SEALs in Afghanistan in 2005. Given the massive deployment of US Special Forces, incidents like the one in Niger are relatively rare. It has more to do with the extremists getting lucky than the Americans making a fundamental mistake. We don’t know how many other incidents like Tongo Tongo might have taken place in which no one was killed.Five hundred kilometers to the west of Tongo Tongo is the Burkina Faso capital of Ouagadougou, the site of a gun battle with terrorists last Friday in which four terrorists and several soldiers were killed. Local media now say eight people were killed in what was the third attack on the capital in two years.The village of Dapchi in Nigeria some 1,200 km. to the east was set upon by Boko Haram in February and 100 girls were kidnapped, a reminder of the 300 girls kidnapped from Chibok by the terrorist group in 2014. Four years later, the extremists are still active. It is not clear that years of fighting by the US, French and others have contained the threat.</s>A propaganda video released by the Islamic State terrorist group shows part of what happened in the 2017 attack that killed four American soldiers in Niger.

The clip appeared to come from the helmet of one of the soldiers killed last October, when 11 Special Forces members and around 30 Nigerian soldiers were ambushed in the west African country.

Though many Americans may not have been aware that the U.S. had a military presence in Niger, Army staff sergeants Bryan Black, Jeremiah Johnson, La David Johnson and Dustin Wright were killed in the fight, along with militants and five Nigerian soldiers.

The U.S. military has yet to release its account of what happened, though is likely to do so this week, CBS News reported.

Wright and La David Johnson’s loved ones, whose became involved in a public argument over an alleged callous phone call from President Trump, have asked questions about what mistakes may have led to the deaths.

Johnson’s body was reportedly discovered a mile away from the scene two days after the attack.

The ISIS video shows soldiers pledging allegiance to the group’s leader before showing the apparent helmet footage, where the Americans are vastly outgunned.

One U.S. soldier is seen being shot and dragged behind a military vehicle, though what the camera sees of attempts to find cover end when the soldier wearing it is shot to the ground.

Remains of Sgt. La David Johnson found weeks after his funeral

Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford said in October that they did not have all facts about what happened when the troops were on their way back to their base from a reconnaissance mission.

Dunford noted that the American troops did not request additional support for about an hour after the fighting began, and that French forces arrived by air an hour after that.

The ISIS video was recently released on the group’s outlet on the messenger service Telegram, though it was not immediately clear why it was revealed now.

Posts about it floated around extremist social accounts earlier this year, prompting a response from U.S. Africa Command.

American troops in Niger were targeting terrorist before ambush

“USAFRICOM is aware of a post on Twitter purporting to show a U.S. soldier from the Oct. 4 ambush in Tongo Tongo, Niger,” it said in a statement at the time.

“We are reviewing the post and determining the veracity of the tweet and the assertions that there is an associated video.”</s>The Islamic State just released a video that allegedly shows three U.S. soldiers being attacked in Niger.

The video, which has been circulating for months among journalists, reportedly shows three soldiers on the run from militants. The men have few resources to fend off dozens of militants armed with machine guns and grenades.

The scene comes from an Oct. 4, 2017, attack on U.S. troops near the Niger-Mali border. A team of 12 U.S. soldiers had been sent on a mission with a team of Nigerians. (The Pentagon has declined to explain their assignment; U.S. officials previously told reporters that the patrol had been asked to help a team hunting for a senior Islamic State member.)

On their way back, they stopped at a village for food and water. U.S. military officials think a villager may have alerted militants that U.S. commandos were near, setting off an ambush. Four U.S. soldiers were killed in the firefight. The remains of three soldiers were found the day of the attack. The fourth, La David T. Johnson, was found several days later, prompting questions about how he'd died and whether he'd been captured alive or killed at close range.

Months later, a group affiliated with the Islamic State claimed credit for the attack, confirming a suspicion of U.S. officials. Over the weekend, the group released a video via Telegram and to a Mauritanian news outlet that captures three soldiers fighting for their lives.

The nine-minute clip opens with a pledge of allegiance to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi by members of Jamaat Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin, a terrorist group made up of West African jihadist groups.

The video then cuts to footage of several armed militants running in a desert area.

Next, it shows three U.S. soldiers, allegedly filmed by a camera on one of the soldier's helmets. In the clip, the soldiers are clearly outgunned and overwhelmed. One is slowly driving an unarmed SUV, ducking because the vehicle is under fire. Two others are walking behind, firing their weapons at attackers.

Then, one of the Americans drops. The two other soldiers try to pull him to safety, then flee into the scrub. Finally, the soldier wearing the camera on his helmet falls to the ground. The last shot shows militants surrounding him and firing at him at point-blank range.

The Pentagon says the video shows the Islamic State's "depravity." They are reviewing the incident and are expected to release a thorough report on what happened, and lessons learned.

The United States has about 800 troops in Niger to help train local forces and fight terrorism. October's events have led to questions from Congress and others about why the United States has soldiers deployed in Niger, and whether they're safe.

"Knowing that they were asked to try to complete and execute this type of mission with that type of equipment, I just - I could not believe it," Rep. Marc Veasey, D-Texas, who serves on the House Armed Services Committee, told CBS. "Why they were asked to continue to go onto this mission I think is something that we all need to find out."

The release of this video - nearly half a year after the attack and months after the Islamic State claimed credit - may explain something about the current terror landscape in North Africa. The affiliate that released the video only recently pledged its allegiance to the Islamic State. Jamaat Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin is run by Adnan Abu Walid al-Sahraoui. Until 2011, Sahraoui was a high-level al-Qaida operative.

In 2012, he helped create Jamaat Nusrat. In 2015, he swore loyalty to the Islamic State in a video. That film was not released for more than a year by the group's news agency. Even now, Sahraoui has struggled for play from al-Qaida outlets; instead, his group circulates information through Mauritanian websites affiliated with al-Qaida. As the New York Times explained:

"That lack of a consistent media presence may suggest that Mr. Sahraoui's unit has not been fully accepted by the Islamic State, or else that the group has not managed to establish the logistical ties that have allowed other affiliates to post statements and videos of attacks on its platforms."

This video, which once again emphasizes Sahraoui's allegiance to the Islamic State, may have been a bid for attention and acceptance by the Islamic State.</s>From left, Staff Sgt. Bryan C. Black, 35, of Puyallup, Wash.; Sgt. La David Johnson of Miami Gardens, Fla.; Staff Sgt. Jeremiah W. Johnson, 39, of Springboro, Ohio and Staff Sgt. Dustin M. Wright, 29, of Lyons, Ga. All four were killed in Niger, when a joint patrol of American and Niger forces was ambushed on Oct. 4, 2017, by militants believed linked to the Islamic State group.

STUTTGART, Germany — Islamic State militants have released a video that purportedly shows scenes from an October ambush in Niger in which four U.S. soldiers were killed.

The video, circulated on social media on Sunday, shows a small team of U.S. troops under heavy gunfire. Overlaid with music and propaganda messages, it opens with militants appearing to assemble before the ambush.

The nine-minute video then cuts to the view from a U.S. soldier’s helmet, seized by the militants after the attack, which shows the ambush in graphic detail. This part of the video suggests the troops were heavily outgunned, with the sound of fire pouring in from several directions.

The military said it was aware of the ISIS propaganda video and asked that the imagery not be released.

A portion of the video shows the Americans crouching behind their Toyota Land Cruiser and a truck. The soldiers fired smoke grenades, which could have been used to shroud their position and to guide in airstrikes.

U.S. officials have said French air support didn’t arrive until two hours after the attack. U.S. troops didn’t call in for air support until about one hour after the assault, military officials have said. The apparent delay could have been a result of radio communication problems.

With no place to take cover, two soldiers broke into a sprint, the video shows. One soldier fell after being shot. Moments later, helmet cam video shows the soldier shot again at close range as masked militants appear around him.

Killed in the ambush were Sgt. La David Johnson and Staff Sgts. Bryan Black, Jeremiah Johnson and Dustin Wright.

The roughly 40-person U.S.-Nigerien patrol, which included 12 U.S. soldiers, came under attack on the morning of Oct. 4 by about 50 Islamic State fighters as the unit was returning to its camp. The propaganda video showed only a small group of U.S. soldiers, who appear to have been separated from the rest of their team.

The patrol had left the Nigerien capital of Niamey on Oct. 3 to meet with local leaders near the village of Tongo Tongo, about 53 miles to the north.

U.S. Africa Command continues to investigate the attack and whether U.S. troops had sufficient resources to carry out patrols where different militant groups operate. The military says its forces are deployed as advisers to local troops.

In the wake of the ambush some lawmakers are questioning the wisdom of the Niger mission.

“We don’t know exactly where we’re at in the world militarily and what we’re doing,” Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” after the attack. There are about 800 American troops in Niger.

AFRICOM, expected to wrap up its investigation in the coming weeks, condemned the video.

“The release of these materials demonstrates the depravity of the enemy we are fighting,” AFRICOM said in a statement. “We encourage the news media to deny ISIS a propaganda success by not purchasing, showing or bringing undue attention to these images as it re-victimizes the affected families, amplifies IS atrocities and aids in their recruiting.”</s>The US military mission in Niger is under renewed scrutiny after ISIS released a video of the October 2017 ambush that killed four US soldiers. Their unit was reportedly hunting a senior IS member without proper orders.

Four members of the US military were killed and another four injured in October 2017, after their patrol was ambushed by Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) militants outside of Tongo Tongo, near the border with Mali. Contrary to initial claims that the ambushed unit was on a routine patrol, the report indicates that they went hunting for a high-level IS commander, Doundou Chefou, AP reported on Tuesday, citing anonymous sources familiar with the report’s contents.

The incident revealed a major US troop presence in the West African country, which was quickly eclipsed by a media spat between a Florida Congresswoman and President Donald Trump over his condolence call to the widow of one of the men.

On Sunday, IS posted a video from the ambush, taken from the helmet camera of one of the slain soldiers. The video shows the attack and the deaths of two soldiers, ending with one of them being shot repeatedly at close range.

SOFREP, which says it posts “trusted news and intelligence from Spec Ops veterans,”also published the video, editing out IS propaganda. Many veterans condemned the site’s decision to publish the video. Others, however, defended the publication as a way to get to the truth about the ambush.

The Pentagon refused to comment on the authenticity of the video, but said it “re-victimizes the affected families, amplifies IS atrocities and aids in their recruiting.”

“The release of these materials… demonstrates the depravity of the enemy we are fighting,” the Department of Defense said in a statement.

That is precisely why the video was published, SOFREP editor Jack Murphy argued in an explanatory article.

“The ambush in Niger has also been subject to myths, rumors, and propaganda as were events in Jordan and Benghazi. The helmet cam footage is a piece of hard evidence, one which depicts factual events,” Murphy wrote.

IS was trying to control the narrative by using it for propaganda, he wrote, so SOFREP “stripped the propaganda aspect from the video and put it in its proper context as video that proves that US Special Forces soldiers fought and died bravely that day.”

“You can’t demand facts and simultaneously be protected from them,” Murphy told the critics.

The official report about the incident has been submitted to Defense Secretary James Mattis, General Thomas Waldhauser, head of the US Africa Command (AFRICOM) told lawmakers on Tuesday. It is still being reviewed and the findings will be shared with Congress pending notification of the four soldiers’ families, Waldhauser said.

Niger is a country of over 20 million, located on the southern edge of the Sahara desert between Mali and Chad, north of Nigeria and south of Libya. AFRICOM is building a massive drone base outside of Agadez, central Niger. The command is still waiting for approval to give the 800 troops deployed in Niger hazard pay for combat zones, Waldhauser told the House Armed Services Committee.

Asked why US soldiers were being put in harm’s way across Africa, the general said it was part of a preventive strategy to contain “violent extremist organizations” such as IS, Al-Qaeda, Boko Haram and Al-Shabaab.

“They permeate the entire continent in various locations,” and would like to conduct operations in Europe and the US, Waldhauser told lawmakers. “We’re trying to prevent something from happening before it does.”

If the US does not maintain a presence in Africa, Russia and China will step in, the general argued, holding up the newly built Chinese base in Djibouti as an example.

“It’s important that we are there, that we are present, and the African people see our commitment to their overall desires,” Waldhauser said.

Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!</s>ISIS has released a sickening video appearing to show their fighters ambushing and killing four US soldiers in Niger.

The 9 minute, 15 second video appears to be shot from multiple helmet cams on the US soldiers who died in on October 4 in Tongo Tongo, Niger in an ambush by 50 ISIS militants.

The video reveals heartbreaking details about the courageous last moments of the four soldiers, although it is edited with multiple cuts that make the full context of the firefight unclear.

DailyMail.com is not publishing the full video, which is extremely graphic, but the withheld portions are described in detail below.

The attack raised questions about the US military's role in Niger, where about 800 US military personnel are stationed to train local forces and operate drones.

It also sparked a furious dispute between President Donald Trump and a Democratic congresswoman from Florida who claimed he slighted the family of one of the soldiers.

The ambush occurred as a unit of 12 American special forces soldiers and 30 Nigerien troops returned from the village near the border with Mali, where they had been hunting for a senior Islamic State member.

The video opens with footage of what appear to be ISIS militants riding in light pickup trucks before the ambush.

An estimated 50 militants armed with machine guns and rocket propelled grenades participated in the ambush, which left 21 of their number dead.

Next, gruesome still photos of the bodies of the American soldiers flash across the screen.

The helmet cam portion of the video begins with the Americans pinned down under gunfire next to a tactical truck and a Toyota Landcruiser.

Together with a few Nigerien allies, the US soldiers move with each vehicle toward colored smoke grenades that have been deployed for cover and to alert air support.

It would be two hours later until French jets arrived to provide air support.

Soldiers walk next to each vehicle, laying down suppressive fire as the vehicles roll over the desert scrub.

After a cut, it appears that the Nigerien support personnel and tactical vehicle are gone, and three US soldiers are making a final stand by the Landcruiser.

The driver of the Landcruiser steers it from a prone position, with his legs sticking out the passenger side door, as two other soldiers move along side firing at the enemy.

One of the US soldiers walking by the Landcrusier crumples to the ground in the chaos. He appears dead.

The soldier wearing the helmet cam, who appears to be La David Johnson, checks the body. The driver of the Landcruiser jumps out and helps Johnson drag the downed soldier to cover.

Johnson crouches by the rear of the Landcruiser, the ground around him covered in shell casings. The other soldier crouches by the hood of the vehicle.

Johnson checks his weapon and gestures to the soldier by the hood. He appears to be out of ammunition.

He and the other soldier spring up from behind the Landcruiser and run for it.

The two soldiers sprint for some time within sight of each other. Bullets kick up puffs of dirt around the two men as they run. Gunfire is everywhere.

Johnson, wearing the helmet cam, screams and falls to the ground. The agonizing screams continue as he struggles to rise and falls back to the hard-packed dirt.

Blood pools next to Johnson as he lies on the ground. His breathing is quick and shallow.

Large-caliber machine gun fire rips through Johnson as he lies on the ground, blowing his watch off his wrist. The broken watch strap lies in the dust.

Three masked militants stride around Johnson armed with AK-47s. Gunfire rips through his body again. Blood pours onto the dirt in front of his face. The camera cuts off.

Additional video shot by the militants shows the bodies of two of the other US soldiers.

What appear to be the bodies of Wright and Jeremiah Johnson lie near each other.

Both men have been stripped of their helmets, body armor and boots. They have severe injuries to their faces and necks and blood pools around their heads.

There are indications of post-mortem mutilation to both bodies.

After the video's release, an online channel associated with ISIS encouraged would-be lone wolves to draw inspiration from it and attack citizens of 'Crusader coalition countries', according to to SITE Intelligence Group.

Although questions remain about how the attack unfolded, the Pentagon has remained tight-lipped about the circumstances of the ambush and the nature of the mission while it conducts a probe.

The body of La David Johnson was not found until two days after the ambush, sparking speculation that he had been taken hostage.

The new video appears to support the military's finding that Johnson died in a hail of gunfire, hit as many as 18 times as he took cover in thick brush, fighting to the end.

A medical examination concluded that Johnson was hit by fire from M-4 rifles - likely stolen by the insurgents - and Soviet-made heavy machine guns.

Johnson's combat death led to a political squabble between President Donald Trump and a Democratic congresswoman from Florida after Trump told Johnson's pregnant widow in a phone call that her husband 'knew what he signed up for.'

Representative Frederica Wilson, was riding with Johnson's family to meet the body and heard the call on speakerphone. She went on to lambaste Trump on cable news over his wording.

The spat grew to include Trump's chief of staff John Kelly, who called Wilson an 'empty barrel' making noise.</s>The report comes courtesy of Stars and Stripes, which spoke to anonymous US military officials. The officials noted that the report did not claim that the failure to seek command approval was a cause of the ambush.

Since the October ambush, numerous contradictory reports have surfaced of the events leading up to it. Originally, the Pentagon claimed that the 12-strong US Army Special Forces team was accompanying 30 Nigerien troops to meet with tribal leaders along the Mali-Niger border, only to have the parameters of their mission changed midway through. In this version, they were reassigned en route to hunt for Doundou Chefou, an al-Qaeda affiliated militant who operated along the border, instead.

Now, the officials have claimed that the team told their commanders they were meeting with the tribal leaders, but instead altered the mission themselves and went after Chefou from the start. As a result, command could not accurately assess the mission's risk.

The October 4 ambush occurred near the village of Tongo Tongo along the border between Niger and neighboring Mali, about 120 miles from the Nigerien capital of Niamey. The US-Niger team were returning from an unsuccessful hunt for Chefou when they were attacked by a local Daesh offshoot, the so-called Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS).

The ISGS militants sprang an ambush on the US and Nigerien troops, opening fire on them with machine guns and destroying their vehicles with rocket-propelled grenades. The battle ended two hours later when French air support stationed in Mali arrived, sending the militants into retreat.

After the ambush, US Africa Command began to compile a report on the causes of the deadliest incident for US military personnel in Africa in a quarter of a century. The preliminary report was retrieved in February by the New York Times and it claimed that there were several "missteps" in the handling of the mission.

That report also claimed that a US commander in Niger changed the mission's parameters to the militant hunt — a claim the recent Stars and Stripes report directly contradicts. US forces in Niger are not authorized to enter situations where enemy engagement is likely and they would have needed senior command approval to do so from Special Operations Command in either Chad or AFRICOM's leadership in Germany.

Pentagon spokesman Army Col. Rob Manning said that the investigation into the incident was complete and the final report was being reviewed by Defense Secretary James Mattis. Beyond that, he had no comment.

AFRICOM commander Gen. Thomas Waldhauser is set to testify before the House Armed Services Committee on Tuesday, when he is expected to recommend greater oversight to ensure missions in Africa are properly approved and not too risky.

He may also push for better equipment, more heavily armored vehicles and improved lines of communications.

Another report claimed that Tongo Tongo villagers tipped ISGS to the US military presence when the team stopped in their village to rest and resupply. The investigation has neither confirmed nor denied that report.
ISIL releases purported footage of the October 2017 attack on American special forces in Tongo Tongo, Niger.