Pentagon pretexts on Afghan hospital bombing rejected by Doctors Without Borders

This BBC video says about itself:

5 October 2015

Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) has called for an independent investigation of an air strike on its hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan.

MSF said it is “disgusted” by Afghan government statements justifying the violence, calling it an “admission of a war crime“.

MSF said the statement implies US and Afghan forces decided to bomb the hospital because of claims Taliban members were inside. Vickie Hawkins, from MSF UK, insisted that there were no members of the Taliban operating from inside the hospital.

From Doctors Without Borders:

MSF Response to Pentagon Claim That Afghan Forces Called For Kunduz Airstrike

October 05, 2015

“Today the US government has admitted that it was their airstrike that hit our hospital in Kunduz and killed 22 patients and MSF staff. Their description of the attack keeps changing—from collateral damage, to a tragic incident, to now attempting to pass responsibility to the Afghanistan government. The reality is the US dropped those bombs. The US hit a huge hospital full of wounded patients and MSF staff. The US military remains responsible for the targets it hits, even though it is part of a coalition. There can be no justification for this horrible attack. With such constant discrepancies in the US and Afghan accounts of what happened, the need for a full transparent independent investigation is ever more critical.”

Christopher Stokes, General Director, Médecins Sans Frontières

Doctors Without Borders airstrike: US alters story for fourth time in four days. Commander of war in Afghanistan tells Senate panel that US forces had called in airstrike at Afghan request – ‘an admission of a war crime’ says MSF chief: here.

See also here.

The massacre of 22 people—12 doctors, nurses and other medical personnel, along with 10 patients, three of them children—in Saturday’s airstrike on the Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) medical center in Kunduz, Afghanistan is an appalling war crime: here.

OBAMA CONSIDERING LEAVING TROOPS IN AFGHANISTAN “President Obama is seriously weighing a proposal to keep as many as 5,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan beyond 2016, according to senior U.S. officials, a move that would end his plans to bring U.S. troops home before he leaves office.” [WaPo]

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