The US military inquiry has blamed “human error” for an American aircraft bombing a Medecins San Frontieres medical clinic in the Afghan city of Kunduz that killed at least 30 civilians in October.
The investigation found that the AC-130 aircraft crew mistook the medical facility for an Afghan government building 450 yards away that had been taken over by Taliban militants when it fired 211 shells at the clinic over a 25-minute period in an early-morning attack.
Calling the airstrike a “tragic mistake”, America’s most senior commander in Afghanistan, General John Campbell, said that several service members had been suspended from duty over the October 3rd attack that the medical charity had condemned as “a war crime.”
Blaming the tragedy on “avoidable human error”, General Campbell added that the mistake was “compounded by systems and procedural failings.” A failure of communications between battle-weary special forces soldiers and instrument failure were also factors, he said.
The US aircraft had identified the clinic relying on a visual description from Afghan forces and failed to refer to coordinates provided by the charity that showed the clinic was on a “no-strike list”.
“Tragically this misidentification continued throughout the remainder of the operation, even though there were some contradictory indicators,” the US general said. He did not disclose number of suspended soldiers or whether they would face criminal charges.
The New York Times reported that the army special forces commander on the ground in Kunduz, a captain, was among the soldiers who had been disciplined. He has been relieved of his duties.
The attack was one of the worst incidents of civilian casualties during America’s 14-year conflict in Afghanistan and in addition to fatalities, that included 12 MSF staff, wounded at least 28 others.
MSF has said that it repeatedly provided the US military with coordinates for the Kunduz clinic, including as recently as September 29th, in seeking to protect the facility.
The charity has said that it contacted US-led forces as the attack was taking place, informing them that they were under fire.
General Campbell confirmed this, providing a detailed timeline of the bombing in his brief statement.
The US strike began at 2.08am and at 2.20am a US special forces officer at Bagram air base received a phone call from MSF telling them that the Kunduz facility was under attack, according to the general
“It took the headquarters and the US special operations commander until 2.37am to realise the fatal mistake,” he said.
“At that time the AC-130 had already ceased firing. The strike lasted approximately 29 minutes. This is an example of human process error.”
Military investigators interviewed 65 witnesses and produced a 3,000-page report to support their findings.
Afghan president Ashraf Ghani called the tragedy a “painful demonstration of the cost of war”.
US president Barack Obama apologised to MSF last month for the attack and the US has offered to pay “condolence payments” to the families of the victims.
In a statement, MSF general director Christopher Stokes said that “the US version of events presented today leaves MSF with more questions than answers”.
“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.
“The frightening catalogue of errors outlined today illustrates gross negligence on the part of US forces and violations of the rules of war . . . 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.”
