U.S. Analysts Knew Doctors Without Borders Building Was Hospital Days Before

That’s how Médecins Sans Frontières, known in English as Doctors without Borders, describes the October 3 aerial attack on an MSF hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, that left 22 people dead.

These analysts had the hospital marked on a map they were using to track the location of the alleged operative, a former intelligence official with knowledge of the documents told the Associated Press.

Doctors Without Borders today reported they were informed that the USA smashed into the wreckage of the hospital with a tank, forcing their way in and destroying potential evidence that would be used in a war crimes investigation. The intelligence suggested the hospital was being used as a cover for a Taliban command and control center and may have housed heavy weaponry.

MSF said that the tank was carrying a delegation from a joint U.S.-NATO-Afghan team investigating the bombing and that it broke its way through the hospital compound’s closed gates.

Doctors without Borders, which ran the hospital, acknowledged that wounded Taliban fighters were treated at the facility, but insisted that no weapons were allowed in.

On Wednesday, even before this latest news broke, the worldwide Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission-created under the Geneva Convention-said it was ready to probe this grisly affair for war crimes, assuming US President Barack Obama and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani play ball.

MSF President Meinie Nicolai said the new details suggest that the hospital was intentionally targeted.

“As you are all well aware, I do not support the idea of endless war”, Obama said Thursday as he announced he was dropping plans to withdraw almost all US forces from Afghanistan by the end of next year. The MSF also said that none of its staff was Pakistani.

“There must be an independent and impartial investigation to establish the facts of this horrific attack on our hospital”, Jason Cone, the executive director of the group’s US branch, said.

In official statements regarding the hospital bombing, USA military commanders have changed their story repeatedly.

The rationale behind the bombing remains unclear, though the commander of us and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation forces in Afghanistan, Gen. John Campbell, called the decision a “mistake”. Afghans who worked at the hospital have told the AP that no one was firing from within.

Naderi is based in Kabul, but her group runs a shelter for abused women in Kunduz. The USA and Afghan governments have launched three separate investigations but MSF is calling for an worldwide inquiry.

The incident added an argument for a few members of Congress who were resisting Obama’s proposal to shift the CIA’s drone killing program to the military.

In response to all this death and destruction, President Obama apologized to Dr. Joanne Liu, worldwide president of MSF, by telephone for the hospital being “mistakenly struck”, according to the New York Times.