A video image showing Iraqi children celebrating at the wedding

BAGHDAD, May 24 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Fresh video images, aired Monday, May 24, showed a decorated wedding vehicle and Arab guests arriving for the celebrations followed by scenes of death and destruction, further evidence backing up Iraqi charges that a marriage party was hit in an air strike by U.S. occupation forces last week.

The tragic incident occurred Wednesday, May 19, when U.S. helicopters killed more than 40 people, including several children, during a wedding party in western Iraq .

Iraqi police sources and eyewitnesses said then a helicopter fired at the party in Makr al-Deeb, a remote village close to the town of al-Qaim near the Syrian borders, killing between 42 and 45 people.

The occupation forces, on the other hand, insisted that the attack was on a safe house used by foreign fighters entering Iraq from Syria and claimed American forces were returning fire and the dead were all foreign fighters.

However, the fresh video footage, supplied by the U.S. Associated Press Television News, "a dozen white pickup trucks speeding through the desert, escorting a bridal car decorated with colorful ribbons. The bride wears a Western-style white bridal dress and veil. The camera captures her stepping out of the car but does not show a close-up," according to the AP online.

Musicians play drums and a keyboard synthesizer as men and children dance. The picture then cuts to the dead body of a man shown earlier playing the keyboard, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP), based on excerpts of the video aired by Arab TV news stations, al-Arabiya and al-Jazeera.

The keyboard player appears lying in the back of a pickup truck as men load what appears to be another corpse wrapped in a sheet into vehicle.

The two channels showed people picking through the rubble of a razed house surrounded by desert sands. A series of tents have been flattened and household goods lie strewn around.

AP said the dead included the cameraman, Yasser Shawkat Abdullah, hired to record the wedding, which ended Tuesday night before the planes struck.

The Arab stations commented that AP could not guarantee the authenticity of the video it had acquired.

The U.S. officials have said they would investigate the fatal incident, but so far maintained that all evidence "indicates the target was a safe house for foreign fighters," according to AP.

Inconsistencies

Another image showing the aftermath of the strike

Commenting on the new video, the U.S. occupation officials claimed there were still inconsistencies over the air strike, sticking to their conviction the air strike did not hit a wedding party.

"There are some inconsistencies. We don't deny anything. We're open to new evidence. We still don't believe there was a wedding party going on," one official told reporters, according to AFP.

The source also said that most of the footage in the video was filmed during the day, whereas the raid took place at 3:00 am (2300 GMT) Wednesday.

On Saturday, U.S. Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt acknowledged that six women were among 41 people killed in the attack, but said forces had not seen bodies of children.

British daily the Independent ran on its front page Friday, May 21, a lead story about the incident. It started, "A tiny bundle of blankets is unwrapped; inside is the body of a baby, its limbs smeared with dried blood. Then the mourners peel back the blanket further to reveal a second dead baby".

Kimmitt said U.S. forces who scoured the area of the combined ground and air attack in the western Iraqi desert had found "no evidence of a wedding," but did not rule out some other kind of social gathering.

"Bad people have parties too and it may have... just been a meeting in the middle of the desert by some people that were conducting either criminal or terrorist activities," he said.

Troops on the ground had discovered items such as "terrorist training manuals", military binoculars, foreign passports, medical equipment and possible narcotics, and dormitory-style accommodation for 300 people, he said.

Kimmitt repeated that the attack was based on intelligence that insurgents were gathering in the remote desert near the Syrian border, and reiterated that U.S. ground forces came under fire before calling in the air strike.

Al-Arabiya has already aired footage of bodies wrapped in blankets and loaded on trucks, and quoted witnesses as saying that aircraft also destroyed other houses apart from the venue of the wedding party.

Kimmitt added that the terrain shown in the footage on television did not match that around the scene of the attack, saying he believed the bodies were filmed in Ramadi, closer to the capital.

Click here to watch excerpts of the video on the BBC