The US Department of Defense will work on compensating the families of the victims killed in a deadly American airstrike on a Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres, MSF) hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan. It’s in the Pentagon’s own interest to cooperate with an outside investigation.
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The “fact-finding team” will deliver a “comprehensive report so that we know what happened in Kunduz, what kind of reforms should be brought and what are the lessons learned for the future”, the president said.
Despite apologies from the USA, MSF has said it’s not enough and has been pushing for a full and transparent investigation into the incident by an independent agency, according to RT.
However the charity has condemned the attack as a war crime.
He said Washington may seek additional authority from the US Congress to that end “if necessary and appropriate”.
It said the USA, North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and Afghan forces had all been informed of the hospital’s location to avoid it being hit in any crossfire.
Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) on Sunday made fresh gains against Taliban militants in Kunduz city, capital of Afghanistan’s northern Kunduz province, and have evicted the armed insurgents from a few 60 percent of the city, officials said.
Among the recordings taken from the AC-130 gunship involved in the attack are conversations among the gunship crew as they fired on the facility, and as they communicated with US soldiers on the ground.
The worldwide Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission, which was established by the Additional Protocols of the Geneva Conventions, is the only permanent body set up specifically to investigate violations of global humanitarian law. The decision to resort to war will unavoidably lead to the death of innocents, so often glibly dismissed as “collateral damage”. The strike “mistakenly” killed 22 people.
The White House has yet to complete investigation into the case, said Earnest. Reportedly, the hospital had treated almost 400 people, including Taliban fighters, wounded in fierce fighting in the days before the attack.
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The Pentagon admitted the hospital bombing was an error.
