So the aircrew chose to visually target the hospital, which was near the field and superficially matched the description of the NDS compound.
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A deadly military attack on an Afghan hospital was “a tragic mistake”, a report says.
The General was speaking on the basis of a report that followed an investigation into the incident, concluding that forces directly involved in the airstrike did not know the compound targeted was the Doctors Without Borders hospital, and that the facility was misidentified as a target by USA personnel who believed they were striking a nearby building where there were reports of insurgents taking shelter. The Pentagon found that Doctors Without Borders did everything right. They did not use Global Positioning System coordinates to verify that was the target being described by the ground forces.
Campbell called the strike “an example of human and process error”. “I can tell you that those individuals most closely associated with the incident have been suspended from their duties, pending consideration and disposition of administrative and disciplinary matters”.
A spokesman for Afghanistan’s Interior Ministry said a day after the airstrike that the hospital was attacked because “terrorists” were hiding inside. The report also says 31 civilians were killed and 28 others were injured. Shoffner said that MSF called 12 minutes into the attack and that the warplane halted fire five minutes later.
“The frightening catalogue of errors outlined today illustrates gross negligence on the part of USA forces and violations of the rules of war”, Stokes said.
Campbell admits the hospital was even on a no-strike list and that the organization called during the attack to alert the U.S.-led forces.
A subsequent US military investigation was done to look further at the case and to determine accountability.
MSF has demanded an independent investigation, saying that relying on an internal USA investigation would be “wholly insufficient”. Investigations of this incident can not be left exclusively to parties to the conflict in Afghanistan. Tom, you just heard what Gen. Campbell had to say about this strike that hit a hospital.
The U.S. DefenseDepartmentcompiled a 3,000-pagereport on the October 3 airstrikethatkilledmostlydoctors and patientslocated in the building. The medical charity had provided Global Positioning System co-ordinates for its medical facilities in Kunduz to USA military authorities in Kabul and to Afghan government officials on September 29. But once again partially due to equipment failure, the information wasn’t relayed to the AC-130 gunship for another seventeen minutes, by which time the strike was finished, and thirty patients and staff were dead.
Calling the airstrike a “tragic mistake”, Campbell read a statement announcing the findings of the investigation, which he said concluded that “avoidable human error” was to blame, compounded by technical, mechanical and procedural failures.
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The US military later admitted that the strike was a mistake and launched an investigation.
