General: Afghans asked for airstrike that hit hospital

22 died in U.S. strike on Doctors Without Borders facility.

The U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John F. Campbell, on Monday responded publicly to criticism over the U.S. airstrike that destroyed a Doctors Without Borders hospital in the city of Kunduz, claiming that Afghan forces had requested the strike while under fire and conceding that the military had incorrectly reported at first that U.S. troops were under direct threat.

But Campbell’s comments, in a sudden and brief news conference at the Pentagon, did not clarify the military’s initial claims that the strike, which killed 22 people, had been an accident to begin with.

Doctors Without Borders has repeatedly said that there had been no fighting around the hospital and that the building was hit over and over by airstrikes Saturday morning, even though the group had sent the U.S. military the precise coordinates of its hospital so it could be avoided.

In the news conference, Campbell said Afghan forces had come under fire near the hospital and then called for help. “An airstrike was then called to eliminate the Taliban threat and several civilians were accidentally struck. This is different from the initial reports which indicated that U.S. forces were threatened and that the airstrike was called on their behalf,” he said.

For the first time, Campbell suggested U.S. Special Forces personnel with the Afghan forces had a role in coordinating the strike.

“The Afghans asked for air support from a Special Forces team that we have on the ground” training and advising Afghan troops in Kunduz, he said.

Asked how close the Americans were to the scene of the fighting when the strike was called in, Campbell refused to answer, repeating that it would “come out in the investigation.”

After the news conference, Doctors Without Borders, which said Sunday that it was pulling its operation out of Kunduz, released a statement calling for an independent investigation and criticizing the shifting U.S. accounts.

After U.S. combat troops withdrew in 2o14, the Taliban became more aggressive about facing down the Afghan security forces, inflicting record casualties. But until 2015, the insurgents had not assaulted a major city with the intent to hold it.

The Taliban’s supreme leader, Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, prevailed in an internal power struggle this summer and is now presiding over a sweeping insurgent offensive across northern Afghanistan.

In taking the northern city of Kunduz, and in other fights in the region, the insurgents are routing much larger forces of U.S.trained Afghan soldiers and police officers.