Video footage depicting a group of young men riding motorcycles and armed with rifles and machine guns is being examined by U.S. intelligence officials as part of an effort to identify the militants behind the ambush that took the lives of four U.S. soldiers in Niger earlier this month.
The video was given to ABC News by Ret. Lt. Col. Rudolph Atallah, a former U.S. military expert on West Africa, who said it was provided by villagers near the attack.
Atallah said the video was recorded by Abu Walid, a leader of a local terrorist affiliate that had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.
No terrorist organization have come forward to say it was behind the attack, a signal that Walid may not have known they were ambushing American Special Forces, according to Atallah.
Atallah suspects Walid is responsible for the attack.
“I think he is the candidate for this,” Atallah told ABC News. “He is certainly one of the high value individuals that the U.S. government is looking at.”
The video depicts men speaking in three local dialects common Islamist slogans.
“It says if we capture them, what are we going to do with them. One of them says we’ll decapitate them, another guy says we’ll fight them with weapons,” Atallah said.
The video was probably designed to recruit more members to the group, Atallah said.
The U.S. and Nigerien forces ambushed were reportedly gathering intelligence information concerning a terrorist leader, according to CNN.
