Obama phone calls Afghan, MSF presidents to apologize for airstrike killing

President Barack Obama personally apologized Wednesday to the head of Doctors Without Borders for what he described as the mistaken bombing of its field hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, promising a full investigation into the episode, which took the lives of almost two dozen doctors and patients.

The USA has characterized its airstrike Saturday (October 3), which killed 12 members of the Doctors Without Borders staff as well as 10 patients, as a mistake.

On Tuesday, commander of USA and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation forces in Afghanistan General John Campbell told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the US airstrike on Kunduz was a mistake.

“The facts and circumstances of this attack must be investigated independently and impartially, particularly given the inconsistencies in the USA and Afghan accounts of what happened over recent days”, MSF global President Joanne Liu said in a press conference on Wednesday in United Nations at Geneva.

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 Afghan Ministry of Defence said on Sunday Taliban fighters had attacked the hospital and were using the building “as a human shield”, which the medical group denied, while pointing out it would be a war crime not to treat the wounded.

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

Guilhem Molinie, its representative for Afghanistan, said that of the 461 staffers who were in the hospital at the time of the strike, there are still 24 missing.

The US has admitted that the bombing was a “mistake”. “This can not be tolerated”.

The US President called the organisation’s president Joanne Liu following the death of 22 people by U.S. bomb on Saturday.

The Pentagon has said American forces were not under direct fire when local Afghan forces asked for air support just prior to the USA bombardment of the hospital. “Even war has rules”, said executive director Jason Cone.

Three different probes – Afghan officials and from the United States military, North Atlantic Treaty Organisation – are under way.