Doctors Without Borders Staff Shot While
Fleeing Kunduz Hospital, Report Finds
"MSF doctors and other medical staff were shot while running to
reach safety in a different part of the compound."
By Alana Horowitz Satlin, Willa Frej and Marina Fang
November 06, 2015 "Information
Clearing House" - "HP"
- The medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders released
its internal report on Thursday about the October attack on
its hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, and again cast doubt on the
U.S. government's insistence that the attack was not
intentional.
The report, which found that the U.S.-led
attack killed at least 30 people, describes in brutal detail the
severity of the attack, noting that "patients burned in their
beds" and that "medical staff were decapitated and lost limbs."
The organization found that people were also
killed while trying to flee the scene.
Andrew Quilty via Doctors Without Borders
The interior of the MSF hospital in Kunduz a few days after
the attack.
For example, the report noted that "a patient in
a wheelchair attempting to escape from the inpatient department
... was killed by shrapnel from a blast."
It also revealed that U.S. planes shot at staff
members fleeing the hospital.
"Many staff describe seeing people being shot,
most likely from the plane, as people tried to flee the main
hospital building that was being hit with each airstrike," the
report said. "Some accounts mention shooting that appears to
follow the movement of people on the run. [Doctors Without
Borders] doctors and other medical staff were shot while running
to reach safety in a different part of the compound."
Although the review isn't finished, Doctors
Without Borders President Dr. Joanne Liu said the organization
released the report to "counter speculation and to be
transparent."
The attack occurred as U.S. forces were
attempting to reclaim the city from the Taliban. A week before
the bombing, the Taliban had captured Kunduz
-- the first time the group had taken a major urban center in
almost
15 years.The U.S. government apologized for
the airstrike last month, claiming it was a mistake, and
launched an investigation. But Doctors Without Borders, also
called Médecins Sans Frontières, or MSF, has
called it a war crime and demanded a humanitarian
investigation.
"The question remains as to whether our
hospital lost its protected status in the eyes of the military
forces engaged in this attack -- and if so, why,"
the report stated. "The answer does not lie within the MSF
hospital. Those responsible for requesting, ordering and
approving the airstrikes hold these answers."
“Being a doctor in a war zone cannot be
punishable by airstrikes," Doctors Without Borders General
Director Christopher Stokes added.
MSF
The organization said the hospital was "fully
functioning" on the night of the attack, treating over 100
patients. The facility,
which opened in 2011, was the only one of its kind in the
region and had performed more than 15,000 surgeries since its
opening, the report said. It was also "one of the only buildings
in the city that had full electricity from generator power on
the night of the airstrikes."
Hospitals are generally protected
under international combat laws, and Doctors Without Borders had
pushed to identify its Kunduz facility as a hospital. On the
night before the attack, the group said, "two MSF flags were
placed on the roof of the hospital, in addition to the existing
flag that was being flown at the entrance to the Trauma
Centre.”
Even before that, MSF had made its location
known to military forces in Kunduz. A few days before the
attack, as violence in the region had begun to heighten, MSF
officials gave the GPS coordinates of the hospital to U.S. and
Afghan military leaders as a precaution, the report revealed.
“The facts inside the hospital speak for
themselves," Stokes said. "The facts, in our view, demand a
reaffirmation of the basic rules of war."
Explosions from the attack rocked
the northeastern Afghan city in the middle of the night on
Oct. 3. It was the 12th U.S. airstrike in the area in a five-day
period.
During the hourlong attack, hospital staff
made 18 distress calls and texts to officials in both
Afghanistan and the U.S.
The report provides a timeline of this
communication. At 2:19 a.m., MSF first contacted U.S. military
officials in Afghanistan about the initial airstrike. The
organization did not receive a response until 2:52, according to
the report.
“I’m sorry to hear that, I still do not know
what happened," a U.S. official replied.
At 2:59, after MSF informed the U.S. official
that it expected "heavy casualties" from the airstrikes, the
official sent a text message that read: "I’ll do my best,
praying for you all."
Najim Rahim/Associated Press
In
this Oct. 16 photo, the charred remains of the Doctors
Without Borders hospital is seen after being hit by a U.S.
airstrike in Kunduz, Afghanistan.
Responding to Thursday's report, the U.S.
Department of Defense again apologized for the attack and
expressed condolences for the victims and their families. It
also pledged to cooperate fully with the several ongoing
investigations, provide payments to the victims' families and
identify repairs to the hospital.
"Since this tragic incident, we have worked closely with MSF to
determine the facts surrounding it. Just yesterday, Resolute
Support commander Gen. John Campbell met personally with MSF
representatives," a Department of Defense spokesman said in a
statement. "We continue to work closely with MSF in identifying
the victims, both those killed and wounded, so that we can
conclude our investigations and proceed with follow-on actions
to include condolence payments. We are also committed to working
with MSF to determine the full extent of the damage to the
hospital, so that it can be repaired in full."
This story has been updated with more
details and context from the report and a statement from the
U.S. Department of Defense.
