US special forces, rather than their Afghan allies, called in the deadly air strike on the Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) hospital in Kunduz, the US commander has conceded.
Shortly before Gen John Campbell, the commander of the US and Nato forces in Afghanistan, testified to a Senate panel, the president of MSF said the US and Afghanistan had made an "admission of a war crime".
Shifting the US account of the Saturday morning air strike for the fourth time in as many days, Gen Campbell reiterated that Afghan forces had requested US air cover after being engaged in a “tenacious fight” to retake the northern city of Kunduz from the Taliban.
However, modifying the account he gave at a press conference on Monday, Gen Campbell said those Afghan forces had not directly communicated with the US pilots of an AC-130 gunship overhead.
“Even though the Afghans request that support, it still has to go through a rigorous US procedure to enable fires to go on the ground. We had a special operations unit that was in close vicinity that was talking to the aircraft that delivered those fires,” Gen Campbell told the Senate armed services committee on Tuesday morning.
Greatest care
Later on Tuesday, US defence secretary Ash Carter said the Pentagon “deeply regrets” the loss of life. “The US military takes the greatest care in our operations to prevent the loss of innocent life, and when we make mistakes, we own up to them. That’s exactly what we’re doing right now,” Mr Carter, who was travelling in Europe, said in a statement.
“We will do everything we can to understand this tragic incident, learn from it, and hold people accountable as necessary,” he said.
The air strike on the hospital is among the worst and most visible cases of civilian deaths caused by US forces during the 14-year Afghanistan war that US president Barack Obama has declared all but over.
The attack killed 12 MSF staff and 10 patients, who had sought medical treatment after the Taliban overran Kunduz last weekend. Three children died in the strike, which came in multiple waves and burned patients alive in their beds.
On Tuesday, the MSF denounced Gen Campbell’s press conference as an attempt to shift blame to the Afghans.
"The US military remains responsible for the targets it hits, even though it is part of a coalition," said the charity's director general, Christopher Stokes.
Gen Campbell did not say if the procedures to launch the air strike took into account the GPS co-ordinates of the MSF field hospital, which its president, Joanne Liu, said were "regularly shared" with US, coalition and Afghan officers and civilian officials "as recently as Tuesday 29 September".
AC-130 gunships, which fly low, typically rely on a pilot visually identifying a target.
The commander said the hospital was “mistakenly struck” by US forces.
Take its course
“We would never intentionally target a protected medical facility,” he told US lawmakers, declaring that he wanted an investigation by his command to “take its course” instead of providing further detail.
MSF unequivocally denies that the hospital was a source of fire. It has also noted the precision of a strike that hit only the main hospital building and not its adjuncts.
Mary Ellen O’Connell, a professor of international law at the University of Notre Dame, said that, according to international humanitarian law, the critical question for determining if US forces committed a war crime was whether they notified the hospital ahead of the strike if they understood the Taliban to be firing from there.
“Any serious violation of the law of armed conflict, such as attacking a hospital that is immune from intentional attack, is a war crime,” Prof O’Connell said.– (Guardian service)