Group calls Afghan hospital bombing a U.S. "war crime"
The circumstances that led to a Doctors Without Borders hospital being hit in an apparent U.S. airstrike are still not clear, but a spokesperson for the prominent international medical charity is already calling them a violation of international law.
Days after the U.S. airstrike that destroyed this hospital in Afghanistan, the Pentagon has now changed its story on how and why the attack happened. It was not -- as was first said -- called in by U.S. forces under threat while working with Afghan government troops trying to retake Kunduz from the Taliban. The airstrike was called in by the Afghans themselves, U.S. General John Campbell said.
Afghan forces advised that they were taking fire from enemy positions and asked for air support from U.S forces. An airstrike was then called to end the Taliban threat.
Civilians were struck -- 10 patients and 12 staff members -- killed by the devastating firepower of an AC-130 gunship. The attack went on for an hour.
The executive director of the UK branch of Doctors Without Borders, Vickie Hawkins, dismissed Campbell's explanation in an interview with Public Radio International, echoing earlier statements from the organization on how they see the incident.
"Under the rules of international humanitarian law, a hospital is a hospital and the people inside are patients -- to target a medical facility in this way is a violation of that, whatever the circumstances," Hawkins told PRI. "The statements that have been coming out of the Afghan government in the past 24 hours would lead us to believe that there was some kind of intent behind the attack. We can only presume, on this basis, that that constitutes a war crime."
Christopher Stokes, the charity's general director, said the organization is demanding an independent investigation and may not be satisfied with an inquiry conducted by the U.S. and Afghan governments.
Using the organization's French acronym, Stokes said, "MSF demands that a full and transparent investigation into the event be conducted by an independent international body. Relying only on an internal investigation by a party to the conflict would be wholly insufficient."
The charity said that the main hospital building in the sprawling compound, "where medical personnel were caring for patients, was repeatedly and very precisely hit during each aerial raid, while the rest of the compound was left mostly untouched." It earlier said that bombing had lasted an hour, and repeated calls to NATO and the U.S. military to call off the strikes had failed.
On Sunday, the organization announced that three injured hospital patients had died, bringing the total death toll to 22, including 12 hospital staffers. It earlier said that three of the dead were children in the intensive care unit. The charity also announced it was withdrawing from Kunduz.
Afghan officials said earlier that helicopter gunships had returned fire from Taliban fighters who were hiding in the hospital. But Kate Stegeman, the charity's communications manager, said there were no insurgents in the facility at the time of the bombing.
The attack was a "grave violation of international humanitarian law," it added. The MSF statement made no mention of whether Taliban fighters were present in the hospital.
The U.N. human rights chief, Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, called the incident "tragic, inexcusable and possibly ever criminal."
He said in a statement that "if established as deliberate in a court of law, an airstrike on a hospital may amount to a war crime."