Gen. John F. Campbell announced Wednesday that the October 3 U.S. bombing of a hospital run by Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) was a “tragic mistake.” That, in fact, reiterates what he’s been saying since the attack occurred:
“This was a tragic but avoidable accident caused primarily by human error. The medical facility was misidentified as a target by U.S. personnel who believed they were striking a different building several hundred meters away where there were reports of combatants.”
What happened—Campbell said of the AC-130 gunship attack that killed at least 30 patients and staff in the northern Afghan city of Kunduz—was a combination of human, procedural, mechanical and technical errors. The report said the gunship fired 211 shells at the hospital compound. (Here are photos and short bios of the 14 MSF staff members who were killed.)
The general, who is the top commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, did not say policy had anything to do with the attack. About a dozen service members have been suspended from duty and may face additional punishment. Campbell did not say who they were or how far up the chain of command they go. There was no mention of accountability at higher levels.
The Pentagon’s 3,000-page report of the attack has not yet been released and no announcement has been made about when that is likely to happen. There was a string of tweets from MSF Canada blasting the report:
Rebecca Kheel writes:
“The U.S. version of events presented today leaves MSF with more questions than answers,” the organization’s general director, Christopher Stokes, said in a written statement, using an acronym for the group’s French name. “MSF reiterates its call for an independent and impartial investigation into the attack on our hospital in Kunduz. Investigations of this incident cannot be left solely to parties to the conflict in Afghanistan." [...]
“It appears that 30 people were killed and hundreds of thousands of people are denied life-saving care in Kunduz simply because the MSF hospital was the closest large building to an open field and 'roughly matched' a description of an intended target,” Stokes said in the statement.“ [...]
The frightening catalogue of errors outlined today illustrates gross negligence on the part of U.S. forces and violations of the rules of war,” Stoke said. “The destruction of a protected facility without verifying the target – in this case a functioning hospital full of medical staff and patients -- cannot only be dismissed as individual human error or breaches of the U.S. rules of engagement.”
David Smith at The Guardian reported Campbell’s statement:
“Based upon the information learned during the investigation, the report determined that the proximate cause of this tragedy was the direct result of avoidable human error, compounded by process and equipment failures. In addition the report found fatigue and a high operational tempo contributed to this tragedy.
“It also identified failures in systems and processes that, while not the cause of the strike on the MSF trauma centre, contributed to the incident. These included the loss of electronic communications systems on the aircraft, the nature of the planning and approval process employed during operations in Kunduz city, and the lack of a single system to vet proposed targets against a no-strike list.
“We have reviewed each of these failiures and implemented corrections as appropriate. We have learned from this terrible incident … This was a tragic mistake. US forces would never intentionally strike a hospital or other protected facilities.”
The day after the attack, which killed doctors and nurses and burned patients alive in their beds, MSF told the world that the shooting had gone on for an hour during which hospital staff made numerous phone calls to various parties, including the Pentagon, trying to get it called off.
Campbell said that MSF had made contact with the Special Forces commander 12 minutes into the airstrike, at 2:20 AM local time. However, Rod Nordland, at The New York Times reported that the aircrew had already ended the attack before it was called off at 2:37 AM. “But that timeline does not agree with accounts by the aid group and other witnesses, who said the strike went on for more than an hour,” Nordland wrote.
