“This was a tragic, but avoidable accident caused primarily by human error”.
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Most of the personnel involved have been suspended from their duties, Campbell said.
Campbell described how a Special Operations AC-130 gunship aircraft hit the hospital instead of a nearby Afghan intelligence compound that was thought to have been commandeered by Taliban fighters during their brief capture of the northern provincial capital.
“Unlike terrorists and enemies of Afghanistan, who deliberately target the civilian population and willingly brutalize innocent men, women, and children, we take great measures to avoid harm to civilians in the course of defending our nation”, Ghani said in his own written statement.
Those involved in the airstrike “did not follow the rules of engagement”, Brigadier Gen. Wilson Shoffner, the top US military spokesman in Afghanistan, told reporters at a briefing to release the investigation’s finding. “We will also take administrative and disciplinary action through a process that is fair and thorough (and) considers the available evidence”.
From this point on, the errors began, said Campbell.
The investigation, known officially as a combined civilian casualty assessment, was led by U.S. Army Brig.
The investigation says that while rules of engagement were violated, the hospital was not intentionally targeted.
Many chances to avert the error were missed, officials added. “The (U.S. Special Forces commander) did not label the MSF compound (Doctors Without Borders’ French acronym) as containing a medical facility, and that the MSF medical facility was not marked so as to distinguish it as a protected medical establishment”, the report said.
It has offered to help rebuild the hospital and offered condolences for the families of the victims, and vowed to learn from what it says was a tragic mistake.
“The investigating officer found that the aircrew visually located the closest large building near the open field, which we now know was the MSF trauma centre”, Campbell said.
The US military later admitted that the strike was a mistake and launched an investigation. “We are committed to making sure this cannot and does not happen again”, he said.
The summary did not answer all the questions about what went wrong, including whether the errors identified in the report constitute war crimes.
He renewed his group’s call for an independent global investigation, something the USA has blocked by declining to consent. MSF reported this month that several doctors and nurses were killed immediately, and patients who could not move burned to death in the ensuing fire.
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MSF has said that it repeatedly provided the U.S. military with coordinates for the Kunduz clinic, including as recently as September 29th, in seeking to protect the facility.
