Doctors Without Borders wants human rights group to investigate hospital bombing as possible war crime

The World
Joanne Liu, president of Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) International, pauses before making her statement in Geneva, Switzerland,

When the US air strike began at 2:15 am local time, Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan was operating as normal, treating trauma patients from the local area. That changed in a matter of moments, according to the group's UK executive director (and former head of mission in Afghanistan), Vickie Hawkins. 

"The intensive care unit came under attack, and the unit itself and the emergency rooms were completely destroyed. We had patients who literally burned alive in their beds," she says.

At least 22 people were killed and 37 others were injured in the attack.  

Hawkins was not present in Afghanistan at the time, but she is one of the high profile Doctors Without Borders officials now calling for an independent investigation into the air strike by US forces. As she explained to PRI's The World, the incident was one of the worst that MSF has suffered in recent years. 

President Barack Obama has now personally apologized and expressed his condolesences to the group's president, Joanne Liu.

On Tuesday, the US military described the attack as a mistake, and denied that it would ever deliberately target a medical facility. General John Campbell told the Senate committee that the military investigation into the attack would be "thorough, objective and transparent."

According to Hawkins, that promise lacks credibility: "We are of the strong conviction that an independent body needs to have a look at how this could have happened. We don't find it sufficient that that militaries that are responsible are investigating themselves."

The organization is calling for the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission to conduct its own investigation, under the presumption that the incident constitutes a war crime. That commission, set up in 1961 under the Geneva Conventions to investigate human rights violations, has never previously been used.

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