Yet some members of the SASR continued to operate in Iraq over the next few years in a number of roles. In 2004 claims appeared in the media that Australian special forces were involved in counter-insurgency operations inside Iraq, although this was denied by the government. An SASR team was deployed to Iraq in May and June 2005 as part the effort to free Douglas Wood, an Australian engineer kidnapped in Baghdad; however, he was later recovered alive by US and Iraqi forces. In 2007, British media reports suggested that SASR elements were still operating in Iraq, along the southern border with Iran, targeting arms smugglers. Later, a small number of SASR personnel were deployed to Iraq in June 2014 to protect the Australian embassy when the security of Baghdad was threatened by the 2014 Northern Iraq offensive, while others were reported to have been tasked with providing security to Royal Australian Air Force aircrew aboard transport aircraft delivering arms and munitions to forces in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq during September 2014.