Doctors Without Borders has announced today it is withdrawing immediately from the Kunduz area, following a Saturday US airstrike against the hospital they were running, an attack which killed 22 people, including 12 of their staff. They warned the strike amounts to a war crime.
US officials say they are conducting an investigation into the killings, which they expect will be done in a matter of days. Kunduz Governor Hamidullah Danishi, however, defended the attack, saying the hospital full of aid workers was a “Taliban base” that was “100% used by the Taliban.”
Doctors Without Borders quickly refuted the allegation, noting that the gates of the hospital compound were closed at the time of the attack, and that there was no one inside the site except for patients and staff. They’re also demanding an independent inquiry into the attack, saying an internal investigation is “wholly insufficient.”
There was no evidence offered of the Afghan claims that the hospital was a source of gunfire, and Doctors Without Borders insisted that was not the case. Aid groups and the UN are uniformly condemning the US attack as “inexcusable.” Perhaps the biggest harm of the incident is yet to come, as Kunduz, the site of much heavy fighting in recent weeks, is now without its major hospital full of international doctors.
Who are you going to believe, an Afghan governor who does not even care about his own hospitalized people or the Doctors without Borders staff?
Gosh, I guess we have to go with someone who may well be corrupt, over people who have come to save lives. And the beauty part is, this governor gives ready cover to military who want to pursue their quarry without restraints of international law or simple humanity.
Can Obama ever get rid of the blood stains on his hands?
I don't think he gives a rat's @ss they are not Americans.
The Geneva Convention is quite specific on a case where gunfire emerges from a protected hospital. The hospital staff is ordered to evict the shooters from the hospital and must be given ample time to do this. Immediate bombing without warning is a war crime.
The same is true if there were Taliban fighters in the protected hospital. First non-violent means must be tried to evict them.
One can only hope that the registration documents of the hospital were not burned because these could provide evidence for exactly who was in the protected place at the time of the bombing.
Furthermore, had the Afghan government registered this hospital with the US Armed Forces as a protected place? If that is the case then its claims are ludicrous. That government must now be terribly afraid of its own citizens.
"…now without its major hospital full of international doctors."
…who are not on the US payroll and who don't lie automatically when the US commits a war crime. So much better when there aren't independent, intelligent eyes seeing bad stuff.
With the Doctors without borders leaving Kunduz, that is mission accomplished by Obama. They don't want anyone around to see the massive slaughter about to take place by bombing.