Video has emerged that purports to show the moment 22 Afghan commandos were massacred by the Taliban moments after they surrendered.
The footage appears to have been taken in Dawlat Abad, in northern Faryab province, on June 16 following a major battle between the Taliban and Afghan forces.
The government had sent an elite team of US-trained commandos - including the son of a retired general - into the town to recapture it, but they quickly became surrounded with air support and reinforcements failing to materialise.
Militants say the commandos were captured after running out of ammunition, but witness accounts from the time and the new footage suggests they were actually gunned down in cold blood.
It comes amid a major offensive by the Taliban across Afghanistan as US forces withdraw, which has seen the Islamists trying to persuade government troops to abandon their posts on the promise of safe passage back to their homes.
In the video, which was first shared with veterans network Funker530 last week, men holding weapons can be seen ushering a group of soldiers into a public square.
The soldiers are unarmed and many of them have their arms raised, as their captors yell at them and a couple are forced to kneel on the ground.
'Don't shoot them, don't shoot them, I beg you don't shoot them,' someone says in the local Pashto language, according to translation by CNN.
Moments later, to shouts of 'Allahu Akbar', the captors open fire - unleashing a volley of bullets that starts with two gunshots and ends in dozens of rounds being fired.
A second piece of footage then shows bodies strewn across the ground, as men holding rifles strip them of their equipment.
CNN claimed to have spoken to witnesses who said the commandos arrived in the town in armoured vehicles, sparking a two-hour firefight with the Taliban than ended only when they had run out of ammunition.
They received no air support and no reinforcements despite calling repeatedly for them, because supporting forces were afraid that details of their mission had been leaked to the Islamists and they would also be killed.
'The other forces betrayed the commandos,' an anonymous official told Stars and Stripes magazine at the time.
Sohrab Azimi, a well-known and respected government commando who was recently killed in fierce fighting in Afghanistan's north after he was sent into a hotly-contested area without backup
That account was backed up by a witness who spoke to CNN and said: 'The commandos were surrounded by the Taliban.
'Then they brought them into the middle of the street and shot them all.'
The Red Cross has confirmed that the bodies of 22 commandos were recovered after the fighting.
Among them was Sohrab Azimi, the son of retired Afghan army general Hazir Azimi - a prominent and well-respected Afghan fighter whose death was widely mourned.
However, the Taliban claim that 24 commandos were actually taken prisoner and are still being held by the group, though refused to provide CNN with any evidence.
The Taliban
