Doctors Without Borders, known internationally as Médecins Sans Frontières or MSF, released its internal report about the events and circumstances surrounding the USA airstrike on its hospital in Kunduz. “We neither have the view from the cockpit, nor the knowledge of what happened within the USA and Afghan military chains of command”. The organization’s policy to provide medical care to all victims of armed conflict regardless of their political allegiances.
Advertisement
The report describes a bombing attack that lasted more than an hour and targeted people as they were attempting to escape the facility.
“The attack on our hospital in Kunduz destroyed our ability to treat patients at a time when we were needed the most”, MSF stated in this preliminary report, the conclusions of which could differ greatly from the investigation being carried out by US.
President Barack Obama apologized for the attack.
The group says a day before the October 3rd airstrike a USA official asked whether the hospital or any of the group’s facilities had Taliban members.
“The facts compiled in this review confirm our initial observations: the MSF trauma centre was fully functioning as a hospital with 105 patients admitted and surgeries ongoing at the time of the U.S. airstrikes; the MSF rules in the hospital were implemented and respected, including the “no weapons” policy; MSF was in full control of the hospital before and at the time of the airstrikes; there were no armed combatants within the hospital compound and there was no fighting from or in the direct vicinity of the trauma centre before the airstrikes”, said the charity organization in its internal review. At least 30 people were killed in the strikes.
It is against global humanitarian law to deliberately attack medical facilities, although the USA and its allies have done so in the past.
“…At a news conference in Kabul on Thursday, Christopher Stokes, MSF’s general director, said it’s “quite hard to understand and believe” the hospital was mistakenly hit”.
Medical charity MSF yesterday released chilling details from a devastating USA bombing of an Afghan hospital, saying staff and patients had been decapitated and lost their limbs with a few gunned down from the air.
Advertisement
Three separate investigations – led by the United States, North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and Afghan officials – are looking into the strike, but MSF has labelled the incident a war crime and demanded an independent probe by an worldwide fact-finding commission.
