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NY Times, Nov. 6 2015
Doctors Without Borders Says Clues Point to ‘Illegal’ U.S. Strike on
Afghan Hospital
By JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN
KABUL, Afghanistan — The Doctors Without Borders hospital was among the
most brightly lit buildings in Kunduz on the night a circling American
gunship destroyed it.
The rest of the northern Afghan city was mostly dark after days of
fighting between the security forces and Taliban militants. But the
hospital was keeping its lights on as doctors there were working,
according to the group’s general director, Christopher Stokes.
Spread across the hospital roof was a large white and red flag reading
“Médecins Sans Frontières,” the group’s French name. On the afternoon
before the strike, the fighting in the neighborhood had quieted enough
for staff members to safely climb to the roof and lay out the markers
identifying the building to any military aircraft flying over.
The group had also sent the longitude and latitude coordinates of the
hospital, for years the most important trauma center in that part of
northern Afghanistan, to the United States military to remind it where
not to attack during the fighting.
Despite all that, and the protection afforded to war-zone hospitals by
the Geneva Conventions, the hospital was gutted by an American military
bombardment in the early hours of Oct. 3. The strikes occurred over an
hour and 15 minutes and killed 30 people, including patients on
operating tables and the wounded in their beds and wheelchairs.
At a news conference in Kabul on Thursday, the international medical
organization said that more than a month after the attack the United
States military had yet to offer an explanation for why a clearly marked
hospital was struck, other than to say it had been hit by mistake.
“A mistake is quite hard to understand and believe at this stage,” Mr.
Stokes said at the news conference. The organization shared more details
of the attack and renewed its call for an independent investigation,
which both the United States and Afghanistan have resisted so far. “From
what we are seeing now, this action is illegal in the laws of war. You
cannot do this. You cannot bomb a hospital.”
As details continue to emerge that suggest that the military struck the
target it intended to hit that day, a troubling question hangs over the
various investigations into the attack: Did someone intentionally decide
to fire on the hospital, whether because of the presence of wounded
Taliban fighters there or for some other reason?
As Mr. Stokes put it, “Did our hospital lose its protected status in the
eyes of the military forces engaged in this attack, and if so, why?”
The main hospital building, the most clearly marked in the medical
complex, received the brunt of the bombardment on Oct. 3. The perimeter
of the hospital was mostly spared, suggesting that the main hospital
building was the specific target of the various aerial passes by the
American Special Operations AC-130, a gunship used by the military
because of its ability to deliver precise strikes on one spot over an
extended period of time.
So far, the United States military has offered few details to explain
how the strikes happened.
After the airstrike, the military initially claimed the hospital had
been collateral damage in a bombardment intended to protect American forces.
Later, offering little detail, the top American commander in
Afghanistan, Gen. John F. Campbell changed that account. He said the
bombardment came in response to a request from Afghan forces for an
airstrike, claiming that they had come under attack by Taliban fighters
in the area. Doctors Without Borders has repeatedly denied those claims.
Since the attack on the hospital, Afghan officials have suggested that
it was justified, claiming that the complex had become a Taliban
stronghold in Kunduz after the militants seized the city in September.
But hospital officials have said that is untrue. As a neutral hospital,
the organization said that it treats wounded patients without regard to
which side they fight on. It enforces a strict no-weapons policy within
the hospital.
At the news conference, Mr. Stokes described how the organization
received an email from an American military official in Washington two
days before the bombing inquiring about a large number of Taliban “holed
up” in the hospital and about the safety of the hospital’s staff.
Mr. Stokes and colleagues warned reporters against reading too much into
the emailed question, however, saying that the organization simply
responded that the hospital was full of patients, including civilians,
members of the security forces and wounded Taliban combatants.
Two of those Taliban patients might have been high-ranking insurgents,
based on the number of fighters who had escorted them to the hospital as
well as the intense interest shown in their health by visitors,
according to the group’s report released on Thursday, detailing what the
organization had learned from interviews with staff members.
The organization said that none of the Taliban or government security
forces were armed when they entered the hospital and, additionally, were
no longer considered combatants and were protected as a matter of
international law because of their wounds and subsequent hospitalization.
Military officials in Kabul have declined to answer questions about the
airstrike, saying answers will have to wait while the military conducts
its own investigations. One is a joint NATO-Afghan inquiry, and the
other is being conducted by the United States military.
One section of the new Doctors Without Borders report detailed frantic
efforts during the airstrikes by the group’s staff members in Kunduz,
Kabul, and New York to call and text their contacts in the United States
military and NATO to try to get the attack halted.
The staff at the hospital could hear the propellers of the gunship
circling above, firing on the hospital in roughly 15 minute intervals, a
total of five passes. Some staff members said several people fleeing the
central hospital during the attack came under fire as they tried to
reach different areas of the compound.
The first call to military contacts occurred at 2:19 a.m., and the calls
and texts continued for an hour, more than a dozen in all. They seemed
to accomplish little, according to a log of the calls released by the group.
In one response, a military official with the American-led coalition
texted back, “I’ll do my best, praying for you all.”
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