Doctors Without Borders leaves after airstrike hits trauma center

Afghan forces asked for US air support while fighting the Taliban in Kunduz shortly before an air strike resulted in the deaths of civilians there, the American commander of global forces in Afghanistan said on Monday.

The burnt Doctors Without Borders hospital is seen after a United States air strike in the northern Afghan city of Kunduz, October 3, 2015.

Campbell said US forces were not under direct fire in the incident and the air strike had not been called on their behalf, contrary to previous statements from the USA military.

When he testifies Tuesday before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Gen. John F. Campbell will be asked whether he thinks President Barack Obama should alter his plan for reducing the USA troop presence after 2016 from its current level of about 9,800 to an embassy-based security operation of about 1,000. “We will hold those responsible accountable, and we will take steps to ensure mistakes are not repeated”, Campbell said.

Doctors Without Borders – also known as Medecins Sans Frontieres, or MSF – is demanding an independent inquiry into what it is calling “a war crime”.

“The main hospital building, where medical personnel were caring for patients, was repeatedly and very precisely hit during each aerial raid, while the rest of the compound was left mostly untouched”, said Christopher Stokes, the aid group’s general director.

The medical group did not say whether insurgents were present inside the compound as the Afghan Ministry of Defence claimed, and it was not immediately clear whether the staffers were killed by the Taleban or Afghan or USA forces.

“The seriousness of the incident is underlined by the fact that, if established as deliberate in a court of law, an airstrike on a hospital may amount to a war crime,”Zeid added”.

Despite an worldwide outcry, the attack, which appeared to have been carried out by US aircraft, has not stirred the same public resentment here as have past civilian casualties.

The Afghan government has been struggling to combat the Taliban since the US and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation assumed support and training role by the end of 2014, which officially marked the end of their combat mission in the country. Three of the patients were children, and another 37 people were wounded. Afghan forces, backed up by their North Atlantic Treaty Organisation allies, claim to have wrestled back control of the city, where decomposing bodies still littered the streets.

“The bombs hit and then we heard the plane circle around”, said Heman Nagarathnam, an MSF staffer in written testimony.

But the Afghan leader will be torn between distancing himself from Washington and the need for American firepower to help his forces drive insurgents out of Kunduz after the Taliban’s biggest victory in the almost 14-year-old war.

MSF says the hospital was a lifeline for thousands in the city and in northern Afghanistan.