US Military Announces Results of Investigation of Attack on Doctors Without

A USA military investigation says “human error” and technical failures were the cause of airstrike on a Médecins Sans Frontières hospital in northern Afghanistan last month, which killed 30 people.

“This was a tragic mistake”. Campbell said that the individuals most closely associated with the incident had been suspended from their duty positions.

“It appears that 30 people were killed and hundreds of thousands of people are denied life-saving care in Kunduz simply because the MSF hospital was the closest large building to an open field and “roughly matched” a description of an intended target”, the head of the NGO said.

Doctors Without Borders is also known by the acronym of its French name – Medecins San Frontieres (MSF).

Brigadier General Wilson Shoffner said: “We made a awful mistake that resulted in unnecessary deaths”.

The 3,000-page USA military report will be followed by other investigations, including by North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, he said.

“Other contributing factors to the misidentification of the MSF compound include that the maps used by the (U.S. Special Force commander) did not label the MSF compound as containing a medical facility, and that the MSF medical facility was not marked so as to distinguish it as a protected medical establishment”, the report said.

Campbell and a military spokesman quoted the report’s summary and highlights of two investigations – one conducted by North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and the Afghan authorities to determine facts of the case, and another USA military probe to assign accountability.

The special operations aircraft launched 69 minutes early and thus the crew was not fully briefed, including on targets that were deemed off-limits, including the hospital, Campbell said.

Campbell said the AC-130 crew did not know the building they had targeted on October 3 was a hospital.

United States president Barack Obama apologised to MSF last month for the attack and the U.S. has offered to pay “condolence payments” to the families of the victims.

Gen Campbell said individuals involved in the attack had been suspended pending “standard military justice”, but would not give details on who was responsible.

According to Campbell, MSF on September 29 sent the coordinates of its Afghan facility in Kunduz to multiple recipients within the US and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation chains of command.

The medical charity also disputed initial USA justifications for the attack, which suggested U.S. forces had struck near the hospital because they had come under fire in the area. Shoffner said that MSF called 12 minutes into the attack and that the warplane halted fire five minutes later.

“We reiterate our (request) that the USA government consent to an independent investigation led by the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission to establish what happened in Kunduz, how it happened, and why it happened”, Liu added.