Probe: Hospital hit in U.S. airstrike had no fighters
Doctors Without Borders report describes scenes of horror in Afghan facility
No armed combatants were in or near an Afghan hospital hit by a U.S. airstrike last month that killed 30 people, including patients who were burned in their beds and staff gunned down by a circling U.S. gunship as they tried to flee, according to an investigation by Doctors Without Borders.
The international aid organization released its 13-page report Thursday that described the scene of abject horror at the hospital it ran in Kunduz. The attack continued for more than an hour Oct. 3 as Doctors Without Borders officials worked frantically to alert U.S. and other authorities, the report said.
The U.S. previously called the airstrike a “mistake.” President Obama expressed his “deepest condolences” for the victims and promised a thorough investigation. “The view from inside the hospital is that this attack was conducted with a purpose to kill and destroy,” Christopher Stokes, general director of Doctors Without Borders, said in a statement Thursday. “But we don’t know why. We neither have the view from the cockpit, nor the knowledge of what happened within the U.S. and Afghan military chains of command.”
The strikes appeared to focus almost exclusively on the main hospital, where patients filled the intensive care unit and surgeries were underway, the report said. Patients burned in their beds, medical staff were decapitated or had their limbs blown off and others were on fire as they fled the devastation, it added.
Some trying to escape were gunned down by a AC-130 gunship, according to the report. Thirteen staff members and 10 patients were among those killed.
“Hospitals have protected status under the rules of war,” Joanne Liu, international president of Doctors Without Borders said in the report. Yet, the hospital “came under relentless and brutal aerial attack by U.S. forces.”
The attack occurred as Afghanistan security forces, supported by the U.S. military, tried to recapture Kunduz from Taliban insurgents who had taken the city of 300,000 the week before.
In the days before the attack, Doctors Without Borders confirmed the location with U.S. officials in Kabul and the Afghan Ministry of the Interior.
There were 105 patients in the hospital when the attack began, including three or four Afghan government security troops and about 20 Taliban fighters, who were unarmed in line with a policy disallowing weapons at the facility, the report said.
The Pentagon issued a statement in the days after the airstrikes that “insurgents ... were directly firing upon U.S. servicemembers advising and assisting Afghan security forces.” Sediq Sediqi, spokesman for the Afghan Interior Ministry, also insisted that up to 15 enemy fighters were shooting from the hospital.