Obama Apologizes To Aid Group For Hospital Bombing

Thirty-three people remain unaccounted for five days after the deadly USA bombing of a Doctors Without Borders hospital, the charity’s representative in Afghanistan said Thursday.

As it calls for the IHFFC to investigate Saturday’s airstrike, MSF has released this video of daily operations at the trauma center in 2011, 2014 and 2015, including footage taken after the USA bombing.

Doctors Without Borders has called the incident a war crime and has demanded an independent investigation. There were more than 80 staff and 105 patients and their caretakers in the hospital at the time of the attack, officials said.

However, the worldwide president of the MSF has labelled the actions a war crime and called for an external inquiry.

A number of inquiries have been ordered – by the USA justice department, the Pentagon and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. General John Campbell told the Senate committee that the military investigation into the attack would be “thorough, objective and transparent”.

In a press conference yesterday, Liu had said that the hospital’s patients burned in their beds, and medical staff members were killed even as they worked.

Joanne Liu, Doctors Without Borders’ global president, said the organization received Obama’s apology.

Neither the United States nor Afghanistan were signatories to the worldwide Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission (IHFFC) but Jason Cone, executive director of MSF in the United States, called on Obama to consent to the commission.

The global Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission, which was established by the Additional Protocols of the Geneva Conventions, is the only permanent body set up specifically to investigate violations of worldwide humanitarian law.

The hospital was bombed as USA forces were trying to help Afghans retake the northern town of Kunduz from Taliban militants.

Earlier Wednesday, Liu said the strike “was not just an attack on our hospital, it was an attack on the Geneva Conventions”.

The White House said on Tuesday that additional information was needed before Mr Obama would issue an apology, but reversed course yesterday.

“We would never intentionally target a protected medical facility”, Campbell told senators. “There is no commitment to an independent investigation yet”. “Our colleagues had to operate on each other”, Dr Liu said of the chaos.