“No military in history has done more to avoid harming innocents,” Campbell told the U.S. Senate, three days after a U.S. airstrike hit a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Afghanistan.
Mark Wilson / Getty Images
Gen. John Campbell, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, vowed Tuesday that the investigation into an airstrike that hit a Médecins Sans Frontières clinic in the country on Saturday would be "thorough, objective, and transparent."
Appearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee for the fist time in eight months, Campbell opened his testimony by discussing the "tragic loss of lives" in the U.S. airstrike, which killed 22 staff and patients at the MSF clinic in Kunduz.
Officials with the medical charity, which is known as Doctors Without Borders in English, have called the airstrike a possible war crime and demanded an independent investigation into the incident.
But Campbell said he had confidence the three investigations into the incident -- conducted by NATO, the Department of Defense, and Afghanistan's government -- would bring the facts to light.
The four-star general acknowledged for the first time that the hospital was mistakenly struck. He added that a U.S. special forces unit was in the vicinity of the hospital and talking to the aircraft that dropped the bombs.
U.S. forces, he said, "would never intentionally target a protected medical facility," comparing his troops' actions to the Taliban's frequent attacks on civilians.
"No military in history has done more to avoid harming innocents," Campbell said of his forces.
However, in a statement issued before Campbell's testimony, MSF President Dr. Joanne Liu said the hospital was "deliberately bombed."
"Until proven otherwise, the events of last Saturday amount to an inexcusable violation of...[international] law. We are working on the presumption of a war crime," she said.
"This attack cannot be brushed aside as a mere mistake or an inevitable consequence of war," Liu said.
An Afghan boy who survived the Kunduz bombing receives treatment in Kabul on Tuesday.
Wakil Kohsar / AFP / Getty Images
The U.S. initially said that American forces were under attack from Taliban members taking up spots in the hospital and needed air support.
But on Monday, Campbell backtracked and said it was Afghan forces that were under fire and called in the airstrike.
Campbell reiterated those comments before the Senate Tuesday: "To be clear, the decision to provide aerial fires was a U.S. decision made within the U.S. chain of command," he said.
He said he had directed all members of U.S. forces to undergo in-depth training to prevent similar incidents in the future.
from BuzzFeed - USNews http://ift.tt/1VCY8al
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