MSF Says 33 People Still Missing After Afghan Hospital Bombing

The White House spokesman refused to admit the “war crime” saying on the incident and stressed “The use of that term carries a certain legal meaning, the Department of Defence takes as many precautions as anybody else does to prevent the innocent loss of life in the operations”.

President Barack Obama has apologised to MSF but three investigations – by the United States military, by North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and by Afghan officials – are underway and the general would not be drawn on their progress.

Glenn Greenwald, award-winning journalist and author of a book defending Edward Snowden, is extremely critical of the Obama administration’s response to its bombing of a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Afghanistan. Instead of the familiar accusations and denials by people on all sides, what we need is a thorough and impartial investigation by the USA military into what happened, followed by a trial of whoever was responsible – not just the soldiers involved, but those who gave the orders to attack a hospital, if, indeed, this is what happened.

Obama also called on President Ashraf Ghani of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan to express his condolences for the Afghan civilians killed and injured.

Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) will review its operations in Afghanistan following last weekend’s deadly U.S. air strike on a hospital in the city of Kunduz, officials from the global aid group said on Thursday. The White House urged patience while the Pentagon works to establish what transpired.

USA officials have declined to discuss most circumstances of the blunder, and it’s unclear whether the strike exceeded the rules applying to American forces operating in Afghanistan.

Gen. John Campbell, the top USA commander in Afghanistan, testifies about the Kunduz airstrike before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington on Tuesday.

But scarce details on the erroneous strike have only fueled growing condemnation by MSF, as the charity is known under its French acronym, and other aid groups.

MSF wants to mobilize the worldwide Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission, based in the Swiss capital, Bern. Created after the Gulf War in 1991, the commission has never deployed a fact-finding mission.

“We lost many colleagues and at the moment it’s clear that we don’t want to take the risk for any of our staff”. “This can not be tolerated”, she told reporters Wednesday.

The MSF hospital in Kunduz is no longer operational, which has put severe burden on the city, MSF and Afghan officials have said.

Breedlove added that such an investigation would also receive his personal support.

A wounded Afghan boy, survivor of the U.S. airstrikes on the MSF Hospital in Kunduz, sits on his bed at the Italian aid organization, Emergency’s hospital in Kabul on October 6, 2015.