Obama Apologizes For US Airstrike On Doctors Without Borders Hospital In

“It is unacceptable that the bombing of a hospital and the killing of staff and patients can be dismissed as collateral damage or brushed aside as a mistake”, Liu said at a press conference in Geneva.

“We received President Obama’s apology today for the attack against our trauma hospital in Afghanistan”, Liu said in a statement.

Doctors Without Borders, known as MSF by its French initials, called on the worldwide Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission, an additional protocol set up under the Geneva Convention, to investigate the attack. “This can not be tolerated”, she told reporters Wednesday.

MSF wants to mobilize the global Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission, based in the Swiss capital, Bern. Doing so will send a powerful signal of the us government’s commitment to and respect for worldwide humanitarian law and the rules of war.

It has now been revealed that despite the notification by the Doctors Without Borders (MSF) that the hospital run by them in Kunduz, Afghanistan was under attack on Saturday, the bombing and attacks had gone for another thirty minutes. The White House is promising full investigations into what happened, but NPR’s Quil Lawrence reports that the group says that’s not enough. “If we let this go, we are basically giving a blank check to any countries at war”.

The commission was created in 1991 on the basis of the Geneva Conventions, but the commission has never been activated or used. “When we make a mistake, we own up to it”, he said. Article 90 spells out the procedure for setting up such a commission.

Doctors Without Borders also said it was treating fighters from both sides there.

Obama also spoke with his Afghan counterpart, Ashraf Ghani, to convey his condolences and “noted that he looked forward to continuing to work closely with President Ghani and the Afghan government to support their efforts to provide security for the Afghan people”, Earnest said.

A number of inquiries have been ordered, by the United States justice department, the Pentagon, North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and an American-Afghan team, but MSF has said it would not trust internal military inquiries into the bombing. The US said the airstrike was a mistake made during fighting between Afghan forces and the Taliban, which took control of the city for three days last week. He said the hospital was mistakenly struck.

John Campbell said that he has called on his forces to undergo training to review rules of engagement to prevent similar incidents.