US 'new' intel from Yemen raid includes 10-year-old video

The video, which US special operations forces seized from a computer, showed a masked militant delivering a lessons on "How to Destroy The Cross" and demonstrating how to make explosives while standing before a whiteboard.

But the video, although authentic, was some 10 years old and had been circulated online before.

"We didn't know it was an old file," said US Central Command spokesman Colonel John Thomas.

The colonel said he pulled the video because he didn't want critics to claim the military was rehashing old intelligence, and stressed commandos did actually grab a trove of more current and useful files that remain classified.

"I just didn't want anyone to say... we are putting out the information and trying to be deceptive, because that's not the case," Thomas said, defending the decision to pull the video.

The White House and Pentagon have been on the defensive since Sunday's raid - the first authorised by President Donald Trump - which targeted an al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) compound in Yemen.

An eight-year-old girl and a navy SEAL was killed in the attack that left more than 40 people - including AQAP militants as well as civilians - dead, according to figures from Yemeni officials.

Three more service members were injured when their tilt-rotor aircraft made a "hard landing." The $75 million MV-22 Osprey had to be destroyed in place to avoid having it fall into enemy hands.

On Wednesday, the Pentagon acknowledged that several non-combatants, including children, had apparently been killed in the raid.

White House spokesman Sean Spicer on Thursday said the raid was a "success by all standards," despite earlier comments by an unnamed senior military official suggesting "almost everything went wrong".

The military seldom puts videos online highlighting intelligence it has seized. 

"This is more information than we've gotten at any one time from an AQAP location (in Yemen) up till now," he said.