Screen grab of “Hana” Al Qathafi playing with the former Libyan leader

The British daily newspaper, The Daily Telegraph has published the first film footage of what it claims to be former Libyan leader Muammar Al Qathaf's adopted daughter who he claimed had been killed in an American bombing raid in April 1986.

The footage, part of a series of clips of the Al Qathafi family at play while on a camping holiday outside Tripoli in the late 1980s, shows Hana kicking a football and being cuddled by her father, the then leader.

It was filmed around three years after the raid on the Bab al-Azziziyah compound in Tripoli which Al Qathafi claimed had killed the young Hana. On the video, other members of the family can be clearly heard calling her by her name.

The newspaper says that girl in the footage also resembles photographs of an adult woman named Hana Al Qathafi whose educational certificates were found in a bedroom in the compound after the fall of the Al Qathafi regime.

On the tape Al Qathafi dressed in red tracksuit bottoms and top, calls "The little heroine Hana," encouraging her to play football with him and his third son, Saadi, then a teenager.

Wearing a pleated red dress and neat black coat, Hana giggles and claps as Al Qathafi scoops her up onto her feet, and then she runs unsteadily to kick the ball to her brother.

The Telegraph says it was told repeatedly this March that 'Hana' had qualified as a doctor at Tripoli Medical Centre. Later this year, it was also shown documents proving she had received treatment in Tripoli from a British dentist in 2008.

Mohammed Ali, said to have been one of three official cameramen and the one to have shot the film, worked with the Al Qathafi family at public and private events for nine years. After training in Kent, he worked for Libya's state television before Al Qathafi spotted his work, and summoned him, The Telegraph says.

It quoted Mr Ali saying that the Al Qathafi family would frequently camp in the fields around the city, and that the former Libyan leader's vaniety was a major pitfall and while he loved the camera filming from behind to catch the crowds listening to him, he was angered by what it gave away.

Later Ali said he used to accompany Al Qathafi's wife Safiya on visits to the orphanage where the family had adopted Hana. The family adopted another three children, Mr Ali said.