LONDON (Web Desk) – The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan has released a video ‘as proof’ they shot down a Pakistani helicopter carrying foreign diplomats, DailyMail reported on Monday.
Ambassadors for Norway and the Philippines were among the six people who were killed May 08 after their helicopter crashed into a school in northern Pakistan.
The Pakistani terrorist group had come forward to claim responsibility for the tragedy but the army dismissed them as ‘opportunistic’ and said that cause had been a technical fault.
Now the militant group has released a video of masked fighters holding a rocket launcher in an attempt to prove their claims.
The terrorists say their anti-aircraft gun is almost identical to the one they claim they used to shoot down the aircraft.
The footage included a message from the Pakistani Taliban claiming they fired a missile from a distance of 3 kilometers (1.9 miles) to down the helicopter on Friday.
‘The missile hit the tail rotor,’ a written message in Urdu says at the video’s start.
Leif H Larsen, the Norwegian envoy, and Domingo D Lucenario Jr, of the Philippines, were killed in the crash, along with the wives of the Malaysian and Indonesian ambassadors, as well as the helicopter’s two pilots.
Twelve passengers, many of them diplomats, were injured.
The helicopter, carrying 17 people, fell onto the Naltar Snow School and set the building ablaze, the local media reported. Officials clarified the school was shut at the time.
Military officials could not be immediately reached on Sunday but said previously, that technical failure was the cause the crash and dismissed an earlier Taliban claim as opportunistic.
However, the surface-to-air missile shown in the Taliban video appeared to be real.
In the recording, a masked militant discusses the missile’s parts, while another portion shows what appears to be a hand-drawn picture of how a missile can strike a helicopter’s tail rotor.
The video was released late Saturday via militant websites and corresponded to other messages distributed by the Pakistani Taliban.
Militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan do have access to surface-to-air missiles.
A later Taliban statement Sunday said fighters’ missile hit the rotor as the helicopter turned, saving it from being destroyed in mid-air.
‘No matter if the Pakistani government accepts it or not, it doesn’t bother us,’ the statement said. ‘God willing, we will carry out (more) such attacks.’
The Taliban claimed they had downed the helicopter as part of a plot to kill Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif who was travelling in a plane to the Gilgit region at the time of the incident, but turned back to Islamabad after news of the crash broke.
‘A special group of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan had prepared a special plan to target Nawaz Sharif during his visit but he survived because he was travelling in another helicopter,’ militant spokesman Muhammad Khorasani said.
Sharif was due to attend a public ceremony to inaugurate a newly installed chair-lift at a ski resort.
In his statement, he expressed his ‘deep grief and sorrow over the tragic incident’ and said he ‘extended heartfelt condolences to those who lost their lives in this incident.’
Norway has also expressed ‘great sadness’ over the death of its ambassador to Pakistan.
Leif Larsen, 61, was ‘one of our best and most experienced diplomats’ who was ‘very respected by his colleagues,’ said Foreign Minister Borge Brende.
Officials warned the situation was ‘urgent’ after the helicopter – one of three taking a delegation of foreign diplomats and their aides – crashed into the school and caught fire.
Pakistani security forces have been battling militants in the country’s northwestern tribal regions bordering Afghanistan for the past several years. That fighting took on a new urgency after a Taliban attack in December on a military school killed 150 people, many of them children.
The helicopter’s crash site Friday in Naltar is several hundred kilometers (miles) from the North Waziristan tribal area, where fighting recently has been focused.
