US air raid on Afghanistan hospital was meant to kill, destroy: MSF
Doctors Without Borders, also known by its French acronym MSF, says it has not yet found any evidence that US fighter jets attacked one of its hospitals in Afghanistan’s embattled city of Kunduz by mistake, saying the raid seems to have had no purpose but to “kill and destroy.”
Christopher Stokes, the general director of the Paris-based charity group, made the comments during a Thursday event to release a report based on an internal investigation of the raid on the hospital in in Kunduz in northern Afghanistan.
“The view from inside the hospital is that this attack was conducted with a purpose to kill and destroy,” said Stokes, adding, “But we don’t know why. We neither have the view from the cockpit, nor the knowledge of what happened within the US and Afghan military chains of command.”
The attack on the hospital last month killed at least 30 people, including 13 health staff, drawing widespread international condemnations. The MSF later closed down the facility as it had suffered serious destruction in the attack, which lasted for more than an hour.
The report released by MSF further described how the air raids left patients burning in their beds, and decapitated or amputated personnel.
The medical aid body has called the attack a war crime, and called for an independent probe into the incident. Officials in Pentagon have yet to provide a clear explanation about the attack, although US President Barack Obama has apologized to the MSF and claimed it was a mistake.
“At 2.56 am (local time) an SMS was sent from MSF in Kabul to Resolute Support (NATO) insisting that the airstrikes stop and informing that we suspected heavy casualties,” read the report, adding, “At 2.59 am an SMS reply was received by MSF in Kabul from NATO saying ‘I’ll do my best, praying for you all.’”
On Tuesday, Jason Cone, the executive director of the organization in the US, slammed the “precise targeting, the prolonged destruction of a fully functioning hospital full of patients and health workers,” saying the fatal raid “transcended even the bounds of war.”
Kunduz witnessed heavy clashes between Afghan government forces and the Taliban militants after the latter stormed the city on September 28 and held it for three days before being driven back.
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