The U.S. Air Force says it will also send payments to the wounded and families of those killed.
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“Tragically this misidentification continued throughout the remainder of the operation, even though there were some contradictory indicators”, the USA general said.
Campbell and Shoffner did not address previous claims by military officials that the Taliban had taken over the hospital, but the Associated Press reports that a summary of one of the investigations states there is no evidence to support the claim.
Doctors Without Borders – known by its French acronym MSF – has said that within minutes of the start of the airstrike, its staff in Kabul began calling North Atlantic Treaty Organisation officials in a frantic effort to stop the assault, but officials were unable to intervene in time. Two parallel, internal investigations found that those who called in the airstrike violated US rules of engagement and used force that was disproportionate to the threat, his spokesman, Brigadier General Wilson Shoffner, said.
An onboard targeting computer that might have warned the gunship crew that the building was a hospital, and thus off-limits, was malfunctioning, the investigation found. And because the gunship had been diverted from another mission, the crew had not been briefed on the location of the hospital.
Stokes reiterated the charity’s position, saying the investigation leaves “more questions than answers” and the attack “cannot only be dismissed as individual human error or breaches of the USA rules of engagement”.
From there, top USA military officials admitted Wednesday, mistakes followed on mistakes, culminating in the deaths of 30 civilian doctors, patients, and staff at a Doctors Without Borders hospital that the air crew mistakenly attacked instead of a nearby building, which was their actual target. It took US forces until 2:37 a.m.to realize the mistake, by which time the gunship had already stopped firing.
“It appears that 30 people were killed and hundreds of thousands of people are denied life-saving care in Kunduz simply because the MSF hospital was the closest large building to an open field and “roughly matched” a description of an intended target”, the head of the NGO said.
Campbell acknowledged the hospital was on a no-strike list and that MSF had called during the attack to alert the US-led forces. “We would never intentionally target a protected medical facility”, Campbell said October 6.
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The rights group added: “This warrants a criminal investigation into possible war crimes, but the Pentagon did not clarify today whether recommendations made to senior commanders include possible criminal charges”. Officials said the crew of an AC-130 gunship had been dispatched to hit a Taliban command center in a different building, 450 yards away. Shortly after the bombing, it was reported that Doctors Without Borders would be leaving the city of Kunduz as a result of the bombing.
