The organization has called for an international body to take up the investigation because it does not trust the U.S. military’s inquiries into the airstrike that killed 22 people.
A sign is pictured over a black sheet outside the Doctors Without Borders (aka Médecins Sans Frontières) headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, Oct. 7.
Denis Balibouse / Reuters
President Barack Obama called the head of aid agency Doctors Without Borders on Wednesday, the White House announced, to apologize and express his condolences for the U.S. bombing of its hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, which killed 22 people Saturday morning.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters at a press briefing the president telephoned Dr. Joanne Liu from the Oval Office on Wednesday morning to "apologize and express his condolences for the [Medécins Sans Frontières] staff and patients who were killed and injured when a U.S. military airstrike mistakenly struck an MSF field hospital."
"The president assured Dr. Liu that the Department of Defense investigation currently underway would provide a transparent, thorough, and objective accounting of the facts and circumstances of the incident," Earnest said, "and that if necessary the president would implement changes that would make tragedies like this one less likely to occur in the future."
The phone call came after Liu spoke earlier on Wednesday at the Palais des Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, to demand an independent investigation by a never-before-used international body.
Liu, MSF international president, said the bombing "cannot be tolerated" and that "inconsistencies" in U.S. and Afghan accounts meant that any investigation must be conducted independently.
Twelve of the organization's staff members and 10 patients — including three children — were killed in the bombing, the organization said. Another 37 people, including 19 staff, were wounded.
Over the weekend, the U.S. said the hospital bombing may have been "collateral damage" in its operations against the Taliban in the city, while the Afghan Interior Ministry insisted the hospital was harboring militants — a claim the aid organization said it was "disgusted" by.
Liu said the organization would be asking signatory states of the Geneva Convention to invoke the never-before-used International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission to conduct a probe in order to "establish the truth and to reassert the protected status of hospitals in conflict."
Dr. Joanne Liu in Geneva, Switzerland, Oct. 7.
Denis Balibouse / Reuters
The commission was established in 1991 under the Additional Protocols of the Geneva Conventions and requires one of 76 signatory states to sponsor an inquiry in order to activate it.
"Governments up to now have been too polite or afraid to set a precedent. The tool exists and it is time it is activated," Dr. Liu said.
"This was not just an attack on our hospital — it was an attack on the Geneva Conventions," she said. "This cannot be tolerated. These Conventions govern the rules of war and were established to protect civilians in conflicts - including patients, medical workers and facilities. They bring some humanity into what is otherwise an inhumane situation."
SOURCE: BuzzFeed
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