Doctors Without Borders: US Tank Forcibly Entered Afghan Hospital

Doctors Without Borders: US Tank Forcibly Entered Afghan Hospital

Wreckage of the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, struck by U.S. airstrikes on Oct. 3, 2015. | Photo: Doctors Without Borders

teleSUR | October 15, 2015

The medical group Doctors Without Borders, whose hospital in the Afghan city of Kunduz was bombed in a U.S. airstrike, said Thursday that a U.S tank forced its way through the gates of the compound, raising questions on whether it was a deliberate attempt to destroy evidence in a possible war crime inquiry.
The group, also known as MSF, said they were only informed after Thursday’s “intrusion” that the tank carried investigators from a joint US-Nato-Afghan team looking into the Oct. 3 attack, the Guardian reported.
The incident further violated an agreement with the medical group that they “would be given notice before each step of the procedure involving the organization’s personnel and assets.”
“Their unannounced and forced entry damaged property, destroyed potential evidence and caused stress and fear,” the group said in a statement, adding that a Doctors’ Without Borders team had arrived at the hospital earlier in the day.
The group said Tuesday that it was dealing with the bombing of its hospital as a “war crime,” saying that statements made by U.S. and Afghan officials indicate the attack was not “accidental” as some U.S. officials had claimed.
MSF International’s president, Dr. Joanne Liu, echoed similar statements made by the organization over the weekend in a new statement Tuesday.
“This attack cannot be brushed aside as a mere mistake or an inevitable consequence of war,” she wrote. “Statements from the Afghanistan government have claimed that Taliban forces were using the hospital to fire on Coalition forces. These statements imply that Afghan and U.S. forces working together decided to raze to the ground a fully functioning hospital, which amounts to an admission of a war crime.”
The United States military has contradicted earlier statements about the massacre that killed 22 civilians, including international MSF doctors and children, as staff pleaded with the U.S. military to stop.