Thirty-three people remain unaccounted for five days after the deadly USA bombing of a Doctors Without Borders hospital, the charity’s representative in Afghanistan said Thursday.
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U.S. President Barack Obama on Wednesday telephoned the head of Doctors Without Borders, Joanne Liu, to apologize for the US airstrike on a hospital operated by the organization in Kunduz, Afghanistan. The charity group, also known as Médecins Sans Frontières, is a famous Western institution providing medical care in the most unsafe conflict-ridden parts of the world; it is devastated at losing 12 medical staff members and 10 patients, including three children.
Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein urged a full and transparent investigation into the attack. Liu has also advocated investigations of the airstrikes, but said that MSF could not trust internal military investigations by the USA, North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and Afghan forces alone.
MSF wants to mobilise the worldwide Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission, based in the Swiss capital of Bern.
She has released a statement on the news, saying that she has requested the government for its consent on an independent investigation by the global Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission to “to establish what happened in Kunduz, how it happened, and why it happened.”.
“This was not just an attack on our hospital, it was an attack on the Geneva conventions”, Liu said earlier on Wednesday.
Only then would MSF consider whether to bring criminal charges for loss of life and partial destruction of its trauma hospital, which has left tens of thousands of Afghans without access to healthcare, it said.
At least 22 people died in the incident at the weekend.
MSF says the co-ordinates of the hospital were well-known and its bombing could not have been a mistake. “We don’t find it sufficient that that militaries that are responsible are investigating themselves”.
The aid group had previously said that pending further investigation into the bombing, the incident would be treated as a “war crime”.
Asked whether Mr Obama offered a few explanation to Liu, Earnest said no.
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“In the United States when we make mistakes, we’re honest about it. We own up to it”, he added. Testifying before a US Senate panel, Gen Campbell admitted it was United States special forces who had called in the airstrike – not, as previously claimed, their Afghan allies.
