U.S. to make ‘condolence payments’ to Afghan hospital victims

MSF staff treat injured colleagues and patients in the hospital’s safe room after the airstrike.

At least 22 staff and patients were killed in the bombing in the city of Kunduz a week ago. Doctors Without Borders said this week that an additional 33 people are unaccounted for after the strike.

Campbell called the incident a “mistake”, and President Barack Obama subsequently apologized to Doctors Without Borders. The MSF sent a letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon about their demand.

It remains unclear how the mistake happened.

The IHFFC is not a United Nations body; it was created in 1991 by Additional Protocol 1, article 90 of the Geneva Conventions which govern the rules of war.

As expected, MSF is now closing the hospital, a maneuver that will now leave many in the area without an outlet for medical treatment.

The Taliban, toppled from power in a 2001 US-led invasion of Afghanistan, are known to exaggerate battlefield claims. MSF has not yet heard from any country. The government claims to have wrested back control of Kunduz city but sporadic firefights continue with pockets of insurgents as Afghan soldiers, backed by North Atlantic Treaty Organisation special forces, conduct clearance operations. No doubt a few military authorities are probably as astonished at what happened as others and would like to know how it could happen.

In a statement on Sunday, MSF said it had officially not received any details of the compensation.

Questions about the recordings of the attack came up this week in classified briefings on Capitol Hill, but the military did not make either the audio or video available to congressmen and senators who oversee the Pentagon. During the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq senior USA military commanders have used the fund to make condolence payments to the families of those inadvertently killed or injured by us military action.

[Doctors Without Borders] is disgusted by the recent statements coming from a few Afghanistan government authorities justifying the attack on its hospital in Kunduz. But if they don’t have the will to fight, or have divided loyalties, it doesn’t do much good. The building that was attacked contained emergency rooms, an intensive-care unit, blood lab, and X-ray room plus an outpatient waiting room. As long as our program of endless military interventionism without regard for long-term consequences continues, incidents like the Kunduz hospital bombing will continue, and innocents will continue to be sacrificed on the altar of modern Bellona.

There is a few discrepancy as to how close Taliban forces were to the hospital, making it a target. Even if this had been true it would not justify the attack. But the narrative on the story has changed multiple times.

It has also offered to fix the hospital that was damaged in the air strike that killed more than 20 people.