Pentagon Knew Afghan Airstrike Site Was a
Hospital: Destroys Evidence
By teleSur and Agencies
October 15, 2015 "Information
Clearing House" - "teleSur"
- American special operations analysts were gathering
intelligence on the facility because they believed it was being used
by a Pakistani operative to coordinate Taliban activity.
U.S. authorities knew they were attacking a hospital facility in
Afghanistan days before they conducted the operation on Oct. 3, the
Associated Press reported on Thursday.
According to the report the special operations analysts were
gathering intelligence on the facility because they believed it was
being used by a Pakistani operative to coordinate Taliban activity.
U.S. fighter jets struck the Afghan hospital run by Doctors Without
Borders, an international charity group based in Geneva,
Switzerland.
The attack killed 12 medical staff members and at least 10 patients,
three of them children, and injured at least 37 people. At least 33
people are still missing after the airstrikes.
The Pentagon first denied the attack. Then it changed its story to
put the blame on Afghan army officials. The U.S. military announced
it will make "condolence payments” to the injured and the families
of 22 people who lost their lives in the attack and that it will
also conduct an investigation into the incident.
U.S. Tank Enters Bombed Out Afghan
Hospital, Possibly Damaging Evidence of War Crimes
By Brendan O'ConnorOctober 16, 2015 "Information
Clearing House" - "Gawker"
- When an American tank forced its way onto the grounds the Kunduz
trauma hospital in Afghanistan
destroyed in an airstrike earlier this month on Thursday,
The Guardian reports, it may have destroyed
evidence of potential war crimes.
In a statement after Thursday’s “intrusion,” MSF said
that they were told that the tank had been carrying investigators
from the U.S.-NATO-Afghan coalition: “Their unannounced and forced
entry damaged property, destroyed potential evidence and caused
stress and fear.”
Ten patients and 12 staff members of Médécins sans
Frontières (MSF), or Doctors without Borders, were killed in the
October 3rd attack.
According to an Associated Press report earlier on Thursday,
U.S. intelligence analysts knew that the target of the attack was a
hospital.
Meanwhile, the International Humanitarian Fact
Finding Committee (IHFFC), an independent humanitarian commission
created under the Geneva Conventions in 1991, is waiting for
confirmation from the United States and Afghan governments that they
will cooperate with an independent investigation.
“The commission has already offered its services to
the governments of the USA and Afghanistan,” a Swiss foreign
ministry spokesman
told Reuters in an email on Wednesday. “Any investigation would
require the agreement of both governments, however.”
“We have received apologies and condolences, but this
is not enough. We are still in the dark about why a well-known
hospital full of patients and medical staff was repeatedly bombarded
for more than an hour,” Dr. Joanne Liu, MSF’s International
President, said. “We need to understand what happened and why.”
Reuters reports that a White House spokesman said
that Obama—who
apologized to MSF last week—assured Liu that a U.S.
investigation would “provide a transparent, thorough and objective
accounting” of the attack.
