LGF reader Thor pointed out that the Associated Press has video of Giuliana Sgrena’s car; I found the video at The FeedRoom.

Sgrena claims that US troops fired between 300 and 400 rounds at the car from “an armored vehicle.”

Here is the image of the car from the video:

UPDATE at 3/6/05 1:54:30 pm:

There are dozens of wire stories and photo captions making the claim that Sgrena’s car was “riddled with bullets.”

How exactly does one “riddle” a car with bullets, yet leave the windshield unbroken?

UPDATE at 3/6/05 2:14:19 pm:

The AP video mentioned above is also available at Yahoo! News.

UPDATE at 3/6/05 3:37:16 pm:

If you watch the Associated Press video linked above, you’ll see a medium shot of this car, changing to a closeup, as the voice-over says, “Coalition forces fired on a vehicle that was approaching a checkpoint at a high rate of speed.”

But now it looks as if Associated Press used an image of the car in which Sgrena was kidnapped on February 4, without identifying it as such; here’s a photograph of that car. (Hat tip: Cattt.)

So we apparently have a false alarm here, triggered by a highly misleading AP video. This is not a photo of the car that ran the checkpoint … but Sgrena’s claim that “300 to 400 bullets” were fired at her car is still completely ludicrous.

UPDATE at 3/6/05 4:18:36 pm:

Oh brother. In their video report on the incident, the Associated Press used a picture of a car that had nothing to do with Giuliana Sgrena. Here’s the caption for the earlier photo linked immediately above:

An Iraqi driver stands near his damaged vehicle at the site of the kidnapping of an Italian journalist outside al-Nahrain University in central Baghdad, February 4, 2005. Giuliana Sgrena was snatched from the street as she conducted interviews near the university, police sources and diplomats said. Gunmen pulled up alongside her vehicle, forced her driver and an Iraqi journalist with her out of the vehicle at gunpoint and then drove off with Sgrena, the sources said. The driver said that the gunmen hit his car as they were rushing away from the scene following the kidnapping. (Akram Saleh/Reuters)

UPDATE at 3/6/05 4:50:19 pm:

By the way, LGF has issued a correction. Where is the Associated Press’s correction for the incredibly misleading shot in their video?

UPDATE at 3/8/05 12:55:07 pm:

We now have pictures of the real car, and it looks even less damaged than the car shown above.