Sorry clinic hit, Obama says

President apologizes to relief organization after strike

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama apologized to Doctors Without Borders on Wednesday for the U.S. air attack that killed at least 22 people at a medical clinic in Afghanistan and said the U.S. would examine military procedures to look for ways to prevent such occurrences.

Obama made the apology in a phone call to the group’s international president, Joanne Liu. White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Obama offered condolences to the group’s staff and pledged a “transparent, thorough and objective accounting of the facts.”

“When the United States makes a mistake, we own up to it, we apologize where appropriate, and we are honest about what transpired,” Earnest said. He described the call as a “heartfelt apology.”

Asked whether the apology signified U.S. culpability for loss of life, Earnest said individuals would be held accountable if necessary.

Emerging details about the erroneous strike have fueled growing condemnation by Doctors Without Borders and other aid groups in the four days since the clinic in the northern city of Kunduz came under fire, killing civilian workers and patients.

After initial confusion, officials determined that the U.S. had carried out the strike.

Obama told Doctors Without Borders that the U.S. would review the attack to determine whether changes in U.S. military procedures could reduce the chances of

a similar occurrence. Obama also spoke to Afghan President Ashraf Ghani to convey condolences and to praise Afghan forces for securing Kunduz, the White House said. Taliban fighters had seized control of Kunduz for three days last week.

Ghani’s office said “the Afghan government is fully committed to a full and transparent investigation of the hospital incident.”

Afghan authorities “will fully cooperate with the investigation through appropriate channels agreed upon by our partners” in the NATO Resolute Support mission, said Ghani’s deputy spokesman Zafar Hashemi.

“The tragedy has shocked and extremely saddened the president, who feels the burden of loss of lives of his fellow citizens on daily basis,” he added.

U.S. officials have declined to discuss most circumstances of the airstrike, and it’s not yet clear whether the strike exceeded the rules that apply to U.S. forces operating in Afghanistan. But the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John Campbell, has said Afghan forces fighting to retake Kunduz from the Taliban had requested U.S. air power, and that a U.S. special operations unit in the “close vicinity” was communicating with the crew of the heavily armed AC-130 gunship that pummeled the hospital.

CALL FOR INVESTIGATION

Investigations by the U.S., NATO and the Afghan government are underway, but Doctors Without Borders officials have called them insufficient and have demanded an independent fact-finding mission.

Liu said the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission, a body set up under the Geneva Conventions, should investigate the attack.

“It is unacceptable that the bombing of a hospital and the killing of staff and patients can be dismissed as collateral damage or brushed aside as a mistake,” Liu said at a news conference in Geneva. Twelve of the 22 killed in the airstrike were aid workers.

“This was not just an attack on our hospital,” she said. “It was an attack on the Geneva Conventions. This cannot be tolerated.”

She added: “If we let this go as if it were a non-event, we are basically giving a blank check to any country” involved in an armed conflict.

Without addressing that demand, the White House offered assurances that the Pentagon would dutifully carry out its internal probe and asked the group for patience while the Pentagon works to establish what transpired.

Doctors Without Borders, which has likened the bombing to a war crime, said the purpose of the independent investigation would not be to establish criminal liability, but to clarify the laws of war and the conditions under which medical teams can operate in situations of armed conflict.

“We need to safeguard that space to allow access to health care in conflicts, that’s the essential message,” Liu said, emphasizing that without such safeguards, it would be impossible to continue operating in other conflict

zones, like Syria, Ukraine and Yemen. “It’s about being able to care for populations in conflict areas.”

Liu said patients were burned in their beds, and doctors, nurses and other staff members were killed as they worked.

“Our colleagues had to operate on each other,” she said. “One of our doctors died on an improvised operating table — an office desk — while his colleagues tried to save his life.”

The 15-person commission, established in 1991 to investigate breaches of international humanitarian law, has never been activated to conduct such an investigation and doing so would require the consent of the United States and Afghanistan, said Francoise Saulnier, the charity’s chief legal counsel.

Doctors Without Borders sent letters Tuesday asking the 76 nations that supported the formation of the commission to endorse its call for an investigation.

The commission’s investigation would only be a first step, and Doctors Without Borders would determine its next moves on the basis of the panel’s findings, Saulnier said, but she added, “We work on the assumption of a war crime.”

THE TALIBAN FIGHT

In Afghanistan, Afghan troops continued sweeping Kunduz for remaining Taliban fighters, with Afghanistan’s forces retaking control of the city’s main square, Kabul officials said Wednesday.

After Taliban fighters seized the city last week, the government responded with a counteroffensive, and troops have since fought intermittent running battles with the insurgents, who have carried out attacks on security forces from the rural outskirts of the city.

Sarwar Hussaini, the spokesman for the Kunduz provincial police chief, said Wednesday that the government had regained control of the main square, which has traded hands several times, with each side tearing down the other’s flag and hoisting its own.

“The national flag is flying over the main square, shops have reopened and life is returning to normal,” Hussaini said, adding that main roads running east and south have opened, and traffic is starting to flow.

Qamirudin Sediqi, an adviser at the Public Health Ministry, said medical supplies were being delivered to the Kunduz airport aboard military planes. He lauded the “great coordination between the public health and defense ministries” in sending medical aid.

However, some Taliban fighters remain in hiding in residential areas of Kunduz, according to Ghani’s office.

“Afghan forces have control of Kunduz city. However, some scattered elements of the enemy are still hiding in the residential areas inside people’s houses,” said Hashemi, Ghani’s spokesman. “This could at times slow down the speed of our military operations as we put the utmost effort into not harming civilians.”

Emergency relief supplies of food and medicines had not been able to reach Kunduz earlier, leading to shortages, residents and medical officials said.

Authorities still had no precise casualty figures for the past days since the Taliban siege on Kunduz, though the number of dead and wounded is believed to be in the hundreds. Sediqi said hospitals had received about 60 bodies, with about 800 wounded since the fighting began with the Taliban assault of Sept. 28.

Residents said militants have regrouped in the Chahar Dara district to the west, where they have been present for months.

Bilal Ahmad, a grocer, said he hesitated to open his shop because of the tenuous situation. He said tanks have moved into the main square.

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