There is “strong” evidence that the U.S. military attack on a Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan two months ago constituted a criminal act, and should be investigated as such, Human Rights Watch said Monday in a letter to Defense Secretary Ashton Carter (pdf).
“The attack on the MSF hospital in Kunduz involved possible war crimes,” said the advocacy group’s Washington director Sarah Margon. “The ongoing U.S. inquiry will not be credible unless it considers criminal liability and is protected from improper command influence.”
The 30-minute airstrike on October 3 killed at least 42 patients and staff and wounded several others. In November, the Pentagon released the summary of its internal inquiry into the bombing, which blamed the attack on “human error”—a conclusion that human rights groups rejected and which MSF said provided “more questions than answers.”
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