The U.S. military is set to announce today that a series of errors led to the U.S. bombing of a Doctors Without Borders hospital that killed at least 30 people in Afghanistan last month. On October 3, a U.S. gunship passed five times over the hospital, bombing it repeatedly over more than an hour and continuing to bomb despite multiple frantic calls by staff to U.S. officials telling them they were hitting a hospital. Doctors Without Borders has said the attack was an apparent war crime “conducted with a purpose to kill and destroy.” The group had repeatedly told the U.S. military the hospital’s exact coordinates. But a military investigation has reportedly concluded the gunship crew intended to target another compound and hit the hospital by mistake, after relying on verbal descriptions from U.S. and Afghan forces on the ground. It remains unclear why those forces didn’t tell the gunship crew they were mistakenly bombing a hospital. Doctors Without Borders has demanded an independent investigation.
U.S. Military Report Concludes Hospital Bombing Resulted from Errors
HeadlineNov 25, 2015