KABUL, Afghanistan — A video showing four U.S. Marines urinating on the bodies of three dead Taliban fighters provoked anger and condemnation Thursday in Afghanistan and around the world. U.S. officials said they feared the images could incite anti-U.S. sentiment at a particularly delicate moment in the war effort.

The Obama administration is struggling to keep President Hamid Karzai on its side as it carefully tries to open talks with the Taliban. Yet the video showing such a desecration — a possible war crime — is likely to weaken the U.S. position.

The Taliban and Karzai each were quick to hold up the video as evidence of U.S. brutality, a message with broad appeal in Afghanistan, where word about it was slowly spreading Thursday.

Senior military officials in Kabul and at the Pentagon who were scrutinizing the video confirmed that it was authentic and that they had identified the men as members of the 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marines, all of whom had completed a tour of Afghanistan this fall before returning to base at Camp Lejeune, N.C. The officials did not immediately release their names.

Pentagon officials said the video was made sometime between March and September of 2011, when the battalion was deployed to Helmand province, a strategic Taliban heartland and a center of the opium poppy trade. The officials said they did not know the precise location depicted in the video, but they said it probably was made in the northern part of the province, where the battalion had operated. Seven out of some 1,000 Marines in the battalion were killed during the seven-month deployment.

Pentagon officials said that as far as they knew, all four Marines in the video were still on active duty. They said they could identify one of them as a corporal based on his uniform.

Even before the authenticity of the video had been confirmed, expressions of outrage and contrition by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and other top officials left no doubt that they regarded it as real.

Aware of the video's potential to damage the United States' already shaky image in Afghanistan, Panetta telephoned Karzai to assure him that a full investigation was under way and that those responsible would be punished. Panetta told the Afghan leader that "the conduct depicted in the footage is utterly deplorable and that it does not reflect the standards or values American troops are sworn to uphold," according to George Little, the Pentagon spokesman.

The video showed four men in the Marines' distinctive sand-colored camouflage uniforms urinating over the three corpses — one covered in blood — splayed on the ground before them. The men joke and jaw with one another, a lewd reference is made, and one is heard to say, "have a great day, buddy."

The Taliban initially indicated that the images would not undermine the push toward talks, regarding the video as just more evidence of what they view as U.S. brutality and disrespect for Afghans. "This is not the first time we see such brutality," a Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, told Reuters.

But later Thursday, in an official statement issued to news outlets, the Taliban dropped its references to the talks and stressed the brutality message.

"We strongly condemn the inhuman act of wild American soldiers, as ever, and consider this act in contradiction with all human and ethical norms," the statement said.

Karzai struck a similar tone — he, too, described the video as "inhuman" — saying in a statement that he was deeply disturbed by the images. He asked the Americans to severely punish anyone found guilty of a crime.

"This act by American soldiers is simply inhuman and condemnable in the strongest possible terms," he said.

U.S. officials reacted remorsefully throughout the day Thursday in their effort to stem the fallout from the video. The U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan and the U.S. Embassy in Kabul offered separate condemnations. The actions depicted in the video "appear to have been conducted by a small group of U.S. individuals, who apparently are no longer serving in Afghanistan," the coalition said in a statement. The "behavior dishonors the sacrifices and core values of every service member representing the fifty nations of the coalition."

The video, posted on public video sharing websites including LiveLeak and YouTube, began ricocheting around international news websites on Wednesday. While the military gave no additional details about where the video was made or who was responsible — or what charges they potentially face — the vast majority of U.S. Marines serving in Afghanistan are fighting in the southwestern province of Helmand.

Whether the swift U.S. condemnations would mollify Afghan anger remained unclear. The news was spreading slowly Thursday in Afghanistan, where televisions and reliable Internet connections remain scarce. But for those who had seen the video, the images appeared to deepen their dislike of the U.S., widely seen as an occupier after a decade of war.

"The Taliban sometimes commit such harsh acts, but it was enough just to kill them and not to degrade or humiliate their dead bodies," said Jawad, a university student in Kabul who only gave one name.

The actions in the video could amount to a violation of the Geneva Convention, which requires that the bodies of those killed in war be treated honorably.

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