Kunduz hospital airstrike

On 28 September 2015, Taliban militants seized the city of Kunduz, driving out government forces. After the reinforcements arrived, the Afghan army, backed by U.S. air support, began an offensive operation to regain control of the city. After several days of fighting, Afghan forces claimed to have retaken the city. However, fighting continued, and on 3 October, a US-led airstrike struck and badly damaged Kunduz Trauma Centre operated by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), killing doctors, staff members and patients.

MSF had informed all warring parties of the location of its hospital complex. MSF personnel had contacted U.S. military officials as recently as 29 September to reconfirm the precise location of the hospital.[17] Two days prior to the attack Carter Malkasian, adviser to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, emailed MSF asking if the facility had Taliban militants "holed up" inside.[18][19]

Médecins Sans Frontières reported that between 02:08 and 03:15 local time (UTC+04:30) on the night of 3 October, the organization's Kunduz hospital was struck by "a series of aerial bombing raids".[10][20] The humanitarian organization said the hospital was "hit several times" in the course of the attack, and that the building was "partially destroyed".[21] It further said the hospital had been "repeatedly & precisely hit" and that the attack had continued for 30 minutes after MSF staff contacted U.S. and Afghan officials.[22][23] The Associated Press reported that US Special Forces were a half mile away from the hospital at the time of the attack, defending the governor of Kunduz province. Likewise, Afghan forces were a half mile away.[24][25]

The U.S. military initially said there had been an airstrike in the area to defend U.S. forces on the ground, and that "there may have been collateral damage to a nearby medical facility".[21] On 15 October NBC Nightly News reported that according to Defense Department sources, cockpit recordings from the attacking AC-130 gunship "reveal that the crew actually questioned whether the airstrike was legal".[13] U.S. and NATO Commander John F. Campbell later confirmed that a U.S. AC-130 gunship made the attack on the hospital and that it was a US decision, contrary to earlier reports that the strike had been requested by local Afghan forces under Taliban fire.[10][11] He specified that the decision to use aerial fire was "made within the US chain of command".[26] Campbell said the attack was "a mistake", and "We would never intentionally target a protected medical facility."[27] White House spokesman Josh Earnest defended U.S. forces, saying the U.S. Department of Defense "goes to greater lengths and places a higher premium on avoiding civilian casualties" than any other military in the world, and hinted the U.S. may compensate victims and their families.[20][28] U.S. President Barack Obama apologized to MSF president Joanne Liu for the incident, saying it was a mistake and was intended to target Taliban fighters.[28] The U.S. committed to making condolence payments to the families of the victims and to help with the rebuilding of the hospital.[29][30]

The Afghan Interior Ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqi confirmed an airstrike on 3 October, saying that "10–15 terrorists were hiding in the hospital" and confirming that hospital workers had been killed.[31] The Afghan Ministry of Defense and a representative of the police chief in Kunduz also said that Taliban fighters were hiding in the hospital compound at the time of the attack, the latter claiming that they were using it as a human shield.[4][32]

Médecins Sans Frontières said no Taliban fighters were in the compound. Christopher Stokes, general director of Médecins Sans Frontières, said in a statement late 4 October 2015: "MSF is disgusted by the recent statements coming from some Afghanistan government authorities justifying the attack on its hospital in Kunduz. These statements imply that Afghan and U.S. forces working together decided to raze to the ground a fully functioning hospital – with more than 180 staff and patients inside – because they claim that members of the Taliban were present. This amounts to an admission of a war crime."[33] Stokes said, "If there was a major military operation going on there, our staff would have noticed. And that wasn't the case when the strikes occurred."[32] On 5 October, the organization released a statement saying, "Their [U.S.] description of the attack keeps changing -- from collateral damage, to a tragic incident, to now attempting to pass responsibility to the Afghanistan government...There can be no justification for this horrible attack."[20]

MSF does not ask the allegiance of its patients.[45] However, judging from their patients' clothing and other indications, MSF estimated that of the 105 patients at the time of the attack, between 3 and 4 of the patients were wounded government combatants, while approximately 20 patients were wounded Taliban.[35]

MSF's investigation confirmed that "the MSF's rules in the hospital were implemented and respected, including the 'no weapons' policy; MSF was in full control of the hospital before and at the time of the airstrikes; there were no armed combatants within the hospital compound and there was no fighting from or in the direct vicinity of the trauma centre before the airstrikes." MSF stated in their press release presenting the review that "wounded combatants are patients and must be free from attack and treated without discrimination; medical staff should never be punished or attacked for providing treatment to wounded combatants."[35]

Médecins Sans Frontières called for an independent inquiry of the air attack on the hospital, accusing the United States of committing a "war crime" and calling an internal U.S. investigation insufficient.[32][46] The call for an independent investigation was supported by The Lancet (a medical journal),[47] and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein.[48] MSF suggested that the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission, which is based in Bern, should undertake this work.[49]

Afghan president Ashraf Ghani appointed a five-member commission to investigate the airstrike as well as the Battle of Kunduz more generally.[30]

NATO said it was continuing its inquiry into the bombing and had appointed three US military officers from outside the chain of command to handle the investigation to ensure impartiality.[2]

Eleven days after the attack, MSF said an American tank entered the hospital: "Their unannounced and forced entry damaged property, destroyed potential evidence and caused stress and fear." The tank smashed the gate of the hospital complex. The MSF executives who happened to be in the hospital at the time were told that the tank was carrying a US-Nato-Afghan team investigating the attack. The soldiers were unaware of any remaining MSF staff at the site and were in the process of doing damage assessment.[50][51][52][53][54]

On 25 November 2015, General John F. Campbell, the American commander in Afghanistan, spoke about the results of the investigation and described the incident as "the direct result of avoidable human error, compounded by process and equipment failures."[55] Campbell said that the investigation had showed that the AC-130 gunship crew misidentified the clinic as a nearby Taliban-controlled government building.[55] The American gunship had identified the building based on a visual description from Afghan troops, and did not consult their no-strike list, which included the coordinates of the hospital as provided by MSF.[55] Electronic equipment malfunctions on the gunship prevented it from accessing email and images, while a navigation error meant its targeting equipment also misidentified the target buildings.[56] The aircraft fired 211 shells at the building in 29 minutes, before American commanders realized the mistake and ordered the attack to stop.[56] The report found that the MSF facility "did not have an internationally-recognized symbol to identify it as a medical facility,".[57] This finding was contested by Joe Goldstein stating that the facility had a MSF symbol on it.[58] According to the report, 12 minutes into the operation, the US military was contacted by MSF, but the faulty electronics on the plane prevented the message from getting through until the attack was over.[56]

A final report, released 29 April 2016, reaffirmed the incident as an accident, and said it thus did not amount to a war crime.[59] Sixteen members of the U.S. military were disciplined as a result of the investigation, though none were criminally charged.[60] Twelve personnel involved in the strike were punished with "suspension and removal from command, letters of reprimand, formal counseling and extensive retraining". The U.S. government said that more than 170 condolence payments had been made, $3,000 for wounded people and $6,000 for dead, and $5.7 million was set aside for the hospital's reconstruction.[59]

Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept accused CNN and The New York Times of "deliberately obscuring who perpetrated the Afghan hospital attack" during the first thirty-six hours after the airstrike, alleging that their reporting was "designed to obfuscate who carried out this atrocity."[61]