Obama issues apologies for the bombing Afghan Clinic

In addition to a Department of Defense investigative process that is already underway, there also will be an investigation that is conducted by North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and a third joint investigation carried out by US military personnel alongside Afghan security officials into the deadly airstrike.

CONE: We are calling on President Obama to consent to the Fact-Finding Commission.

Mr Obama spoke to the aid group’s worldwide president, Joanne Liu, on Wednesday, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said.

President Barack Obama has apologized to Doctors Without Borders for the American air attack that killed at least 22 people at a medical clinic in Afghanistan.

The Geneva-based Doctors Without Borders has openly questioned USA military claims that the attack was a mistake committed in the fog of war.

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

Ms Liu said Doctors Without Borders is “working on the assumption of a possible war crime”, but said its real goal is to establish facts about the incident and the chain of command, and clear up the rules of operation for all humanitarian organisations in conflict zones.

Her comments came a day after U.S. Army General John Campbell, who heads the NATO-led coalition in Afghanistan, told a congressional committee that US forces were responsible for “mistakenly” hitting the hospital. The attacks killed 10 hospital patients and 12 MSF staffers.

Earnest said the president had confidence in the existing investigations and declined to say whether the United States would agree with calls for an independent investigation.

While fighting between armed groups and government forces had made access to the northern Afghan city virtually impossible, the recent US airstrikes on a medical facility had left many in Kunduz without a hospital.

Ms Liu said the global Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission was “the only permanent body set up specifically to investigate violations of worldwide humanitarian law”, and she called on the commission’s signatory states to activate an inquiry. “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”.

MSF said statements from the Afghan and United States of America forces implied they worked together to deliberately target the hospital, which amounts to an admission of a war crime.