US forces on the ground then called for air support, senior officials said.
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He expressed his “deepest condolences” over the civilian deaths.
The United States is investigating what happened. It was the first major urban area to fall to the Taliban since the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.
“Their (U.S.) description of the attack keeps changing – from collateral damage, to a tragic incident, to now attempting to pass responsibility to the Afghanistan government”, said General Director Christopher Stokes of the aid agency in a statement.
“Even so, [Médecins Sans Frontières] says it has all but abandoned its Kunduz hospital in the wake of the attack”. Another 37 people were wounded.
The group said Afghan and coalition troops were fully aware of the exact location of the hospital, having been given Global Positioning System co-ordinates of the facility, which had been providing care for four years.
People caught up in the blaze set off by the bombing described terrifying scenes.
Staff reported the “unspeakable” horror of watching helplessly while patients were burnt alive in their beds.
Global staff members have since been evacuated to Kabul and critical patients sent to other facilities.
Campbell declined to address the rules of engagement for the USA military troops in Kunduz and who specifically had ordered the airstrike, citing the ongoing investigation.
The strike wasn’t sought by US forces, Gen. John F. Campbell said at a hastily arranged Pentagon news conference.
In this photograph released by Doctors Without Borders on October 3, 2015.
MSF has since closed a trauma center it was operating at the hospital and called for an independent investigation “under the clear presumption that a war crime has been committed”.
“An internal investigation by a party to the conflict would be wholly insufficient”. “The seriousness of the incident is underlined by the fact that, if established as deliberate in a court of law, an airstrike on a hospital may amount to a war crime,”Zeid added”.
MSF has denied any combatants were in the hospital.
Staff for Doctors Without Borders, known officially as Médecins Sans Frontières, left the bombed hospital on Sunday.
The organization said it has since been forced to close the hospital. He said it was the 12th USA airstrike “in the Kunduz vicinity” since Tuesday.
Despite an global outcry, the attack, which appeared to have been carried out by US aircraft, has not stirred the same public resentment here as have past civilian casualties. But the civilian toll is feared to be heavy, with residents having to live without food, water or electricity for much of the past week.
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North Atlantic Treaty Organisation earlier conceded U.S. forces may have been behind the bombing, after its forces launched a strike which they said was meant to target militants.
