Doctors Without Borders Won’t Let the US Brush Off Airstrike on Afghan Hospital

The head of Doctors Without Borders has continued to make the case that the American airstrike that hit a hospital in northern Afghanistan earlier this month was a war crime and not a mistake, as US military have claimed.

In an interview with the Associated Press on Sunday, Christopher Stokes, the general director of Doctors Without Borders (also known as Medecins Sans Frontieres, or MSF) said the October 3 attack in the Afghan city of Kunduz caused "extensive, quite precise destruction" to the hospital, where 70 staff members were treating 100 patients.

The Pentagon initially said that it conducted an airstrike "in the vicinity" of the hospital as it targeted Taliban insurgents who were directly firing on American military personnel. That claim was reiterated on Monday by Afghanistan's acting defense minister.

Related: US Operatives Allegedly Knew Kunduz Site Was a Hospital Before Launching Deadly Airstrikes

"Taliban insurgents and possibly Pakistani operatives had used the Doctors Without Borders facility in the city of Kunduz as a safe place," Masoom Stanekzai told the AP.

Special US military analysts were apparently surveying the area around the hospital and knew that it was a medical facility before the attack, but it's still not clear if the commanders who led the airstrike knew that information, the AP reported.

MSF has said repeatedly that Taliban fighters were nowhere near the hospital. "The compound was not entered by Taliban soldiers with weapons," Stokes said. "What we have understood from our staff and guards is that there was very strong, very good control of what was happening in and around the compound and they reported no firing in the hours preceding the destruction of the hospital."

A journalist with Foreign Policy visited the hospital after the bombing and spoke to witnesses who also contradicted the US narrative. Locals reportedly said that there was fighting in the area — but somewhere between 200 yards and half a mile away from the MSF compound. The witnesses said no armed fighters entered the hospital.

Related: US to Make 'Condolence Payments' to Families of Victims in Afghan Hospital Bombing

The bombing killed 12 MSF staff and 10 patients, including three children, and injured dozens. The incident provoked international outrage, and prompted MSF to withdraw from the city of Kunduz, leaving the area without a functioning trauma center.

Hospitals are protected in war zones under international law, and the US has faced intense pressure to explain why it bombed the facility. The military has opened an investigation, and the White House said in a statement that it expects "a full accounting of the facts and circumstances" of the incident.

MSF maintains that the US military's internal investigation is insufficient, and has called for an independent, international probe to find out what happened.

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