No charges for US air crew who attacked Afghan hospital

Mistakes by the crew flying an AC-130 gunship, compounded by equipment and procedural failures, led to the devastating attack on a Médecins Sans Frontières hospital in Afghanistan last year, and 16 US military personnel, including a general officer, have been punished for their roles in the strike, the US defence department has announced.

The punishments for the attack in Kunduz, which killed 42 people, will be “administrative actions” only, and were not more severe because the attack was determined to be unintentional.

The punishments include suspension and removal from command as well as letters of reprimand, which can seriously damage a career. But none of the service members being disciplined will face criminal charges.

The new top officer of the military's central command, gen Joseph L Votel, made the announcement during a Pentagon news conference. He said the military had conducted "a thorough investigation" that was "painstaking" in seeking an "accurate account" of what occurred.

‘Human errors’

Its conclusion was that the crew members of the gunship who fired on the hospital “did not know they were striking a medical facility” and that the attack on the hospital was the result of human errors compounded by “process and equipment failures.”

The AC-130, whose assignment was to support a US special forces team that was working with Afghan forces, came under fire from a surface-to-air missile, gen Votel said, and received incorrect co-ordinates for the source of the attack.

Its crew, communicating with ground forces, came to believe the hospital basically matched the description of a Taliban-controlled building about a quarter of a mile away, and fired at the hospital.

The crew of the gunship did not get all the information it should have received about “no strike areas” that included the hospital, which was categorised as a protected facility.

“This was an extraordinarily intense combat situation,” gen Votel told reporters. The troops on the ground, he added, “were doing a variety of actions at the same time, they were trying to support their Afghan partners, they were trying to execute resupply operations and they were trying to protect themselves.”

Certain personnel “failed to comply” with the rules of engagement, but these failures did not amount to a war crime, according to the military review as described by gen Votel.

The release of the findings, some of which were first leaked by defence officials last month, and the disciplinary measures, were unlikely to satisfy Médecins Sans Frontières and other rights groups, who have said the attack may have constituted a war crime and called for an independent criminal investigation.

New York Times