Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) says 22 people died in an airstrike on a facility in Kunduz, northern Afghanistan. On Monday, the American military said it was Afghan forces, not U.S. forces, who had come under fire, prompting the strike.
MSF / Via Twitter: @MSF_Press
The head of medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières on Monday criticized the U.S. government after it altered its narrative of what led to an airstrike in Afghanistan on Saturday that caused "collateral damage" to a hospital clinic and killed 22 people.
The bombing of the hospital killed 12 staff members and 10 patients, three of whom were children, according to Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), which is known as Doctors Without Borders in English. Some 37 people, including 19 staff, were also injured, MSF said.
The U.S. military had said it carried out an airstrike in the vicinity of the hospital around 2:15 a.m. local time against insurgents who were firing directly on American service members.
On Monday, however, the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Gen. John F. Campbell, corrected that, saying it was Afghan forces who were under fire and who had requested the strike.
"Afghans asked for air support from a special forces team on the ground...[The] initial statement that went out is that U.S. forces were under direct contact fire," he said, adding he is "correcting that statement."
He would not comment on who authorized the airstrike, citing an ongoing investigation, but said he had not suspended military support to local Afghan forces.
Over the weekend, a U.S. military spokesman announced they were investigating the incident, acknowledging the strike "may have resulted in collateral damage to a nearby medical facility."
In a statement Monday, MSF General Director Christopher Stokes said there was no justification for the attack.
"Their description of the attack keeps changing – from collateral damage, to a tragic incident, to now attempting to pass responsibility to the Afghanistan government," Stokes said. "The reality is the U.S. dropped those bombs. The U.S. hit a huge hospital full of wounded patients and MSF staff."
"With such constant discrepancies in the U.S. and Afghan accounts of what happened, the need for a full transparent independent investigation is ever more critical," he said.
MSF has described the incident as a war crime and is demanding an independent investigation.
MSF / Via Twitter: @MSF_Press
U.S. airstrikes have been taking place in the area since the Taliban seized the city of Kunduz in a multi-pronged attack on Monday.
The Afghan interior minister had said that around 15 Taliban militants were hiding in the hospital at the time of the strike, the BBC reported. The Afghan government alleged the hospital was harboring "armed terrorists" who were using the facility "as a position to target Afghan forces and civilians."
But that claim drew an outraged response from Stokes, who said it "amounted to the admission of a war crime," and that it "contradicts the initial attempts of the U.S. government to minimize the attack as 'collateral damage.'"
The MSF head also said that no hospital staff members reported fighting before the bombing occurred.
In addition, he said it appeared the main hospital building had been targeted, not a victim of collateral damage as the U.S. has claimed.
"[The hospital] was repeatedly and very precisely hit during each aerial raid, while the rest of the compound was left mostly untouched," he said.
SOURCE: BuzzFeed
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