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U.S. General Says Afghans Requested Airstrike That Hit Kunduz Hospital U.S. General Says Afghans Requested Airstrike That Hit Kunduz Hospital
(about 4 hours later)
WASHINGTON — The American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John F. Campbell, on Monday responded publicly to criticism over the American airstrike that destroyed a Doctors Without Borders hospital in the city of Kunduz, claiming that Afghan forces had requested the strike while under fire and conceding that the military had incorrectly reported at first that American troops were under direct threat. WASHINGTON — The American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John F. Campbell, said on Monday that Afghan forces had requested the airstrike that destroyed a Doctors Without Borders hospital in the city of Kunduz, conceding that the military had incorrectly reported at first that the response was to protect American troops said to be under direct threat.
But General Campbell’s comments, in a sudden and brief news conference at the Pentagon, did not clarify the military’s initial claims that the strike, which killed 22 people, had been an accident to begin with. Doctors Without Borders has repeatedly said that there had been no fighting around the hospital, and that the building was hit over and over by airstrikes on Saturday morning, even though the group had sent the American military the precise coordinates of its hospital so it could be avoided. But General Campbell’s response to criticism of the American airstrike during a brief news conference at the Pentagon did little to clarify the military’s initial claims that the strike had been an accident. Nor did it explain how an AC-130 gunship, a powerful and precise attack aircraft, killed 22 people, including patients and hospital staff members, during more than 30 minutes of firing on the hospital on Saturday morning as Afghan forces fought to retake Kunduz from the Taliban.
In the news conference, General Campbell said that Afghan forces had come under fire near the hospital and then called for help. “An airstrike was then called to eliminate the Taliban threat and several civilians were accidentally struck. This is different from the initial reports which indicated that U.S. forces were threatened and that the airstrike was called on their behalf,” he said. Who called in the strike remained an open question, and the military itself appeared uncertain about whether any of the Afghan or American troops involved in the strike knew that they were unleashing a sustained air attack on a hospital.
For the first time, General Campbell suggested that American Special Forces personnel with the Afghan forces had a role in coordinating the strike. Nine months after President Obama declared an end to the American war in Afghanistan, the airstrike has provided a tragic reminder that the United States is still very much involved in the conflict. And just as in past cases in which American aircraft killed Afghans, the military has again found itself struggling to explain why it ended up targeting civilians, not Taliban fighters, in an episode that is likely to help shape the debate about how large a force to keep there beyond this year. There are currently about 10,000 American troops in Afghanistan, and most are there to train and advise Afghan forces.
“The Afghans asked for air support from a Special Forces team that we have on the ground” training and advising Afghan troops in Kunduz, he said. At his news conference, General Campbell said that Afghan forces had come under fire near the hospital and then called for help. “This is different from the initial reports which indicated that U.S. forces were threatened and that the airstrike was called on their behalf,” he said.
Asked how close the Americans were to the scene of the fighting when the strike was called in, General Campbell refused to answer, repeating that it would “come out in the investigation.” He suggested that American advisers in Kunduz had a role in coordinating the strike after “the Afghans asked for air support from a Special Forces team that we have on the ground.” But when asked how close the Americans were to the scene of the fighting — in other words, whether they could see the target when the strike was called in — General Campbell refused to answer, repeating that it would “come out in the investigation.”
After the news conference, Doctors Without Borders, which said Sunday that it was pulling its operation out of Kunduz, released a statement calling for an independent investigation, and criticizing the shifting American accounts. The answer may well prove crucial. Investigators are already looking at where exactly the American advisers were when the strike was called in, and whether they were relying solely on information from the Afghan forces, defense officials said.
The American military’s “description of the attack keeps changing — from collateral damage, to a tragic incident, to now attempting to pass responsibility to the Afghanistan government,” said Christopher Stokes, the general director of Doctors Without Borders, in the statement. When American combat operations formally ended last year, the Obama administration decided that American airstrikes and other firepower could be used only under certain conditions: to kill terrorist suspects, to protect American troops, and in response to requests for help from the Afghan military battling the Taliban.
“The reality is the U.S. dropped those bombs. The U.S. hit a huge hospital full of wounded patients and M.S.F. staff,” his statement continued, referring to the group by the initials of its French name, Médecins Sans Frontières. “The U.S. military remains responsible for the targets it hits, even though it is part of a coalition. There can be no justification for this horrible attack. With such constant discrepancies in the U.S. and Afghan accounts of what happened, the need for a full transparent independent investigation is ever more critical.” The third category was the subject of the most intense debate, as officials worried that requests from the Afghans could drag American troops back into daily, open-ended combat. They decided that commanders ought to help only in battles that could significantly alter the military landscape in Afghanistan — such as the recent Taliban takeover of Kunduz.
Initial reports had indicated that American advisers and Afghan troops were under heavy Taliban fire in Kunduz when the airstrikes began. But General Campbell, the American commander, said that he had learned from American military investigators who are now in Kunduz that only Afghan forces were under attack at that the time of the strikes, and that there was no direct threat against American troops. Mr. Obama gave military commanders broad leeway to make their own judgments about when to authorize airstrikes, but required the Pentagon to compile a monthly report for the White House about all American combat actions, both unilateral and in tandem with Afghan forces.
General Campbell, who is in Washington to testify to Congress this week about the American troop presence in Afghanistan, also confirmed reports that an AC-130 gunship was used to conduct the airstrike. The aircraft is a slow-moving variant on a cargo plane that is equipped with large-caliber guns and a howitzer and was originally designed during the Cold War to take out tanks on the plains of northern Europe. Commanders were also given discretion about establishing procedures for the strikes, procedures that are now under scrutiny after Saturday’s airstrike on the hospital. One former military officer who served in Afghanistan said it would be highly unusual for an airstrike to be carried out without an American “tactical air controller” on the ground directing the bombs and missiles to their targets.
He refused to provide more details about the strike, saying that they would come out in the formal military investigation that is now underway. Pentagon officials said that it appears increasingly certain that the aircraft that hit the hospital was called in to carry out the strike, and that this was not a case of bad coordinates from troops on the ground or the pilots hitting the wrong building. In fact, the fire from the AC-130 appears to have been so accurate that only the hospital building itself was hit, and not residential buildings located in the same cramped Doctors Without Borders compound, said one of the officials, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a continuing investigation.
Six years ago, Kunduz was the site of another devastating NATO airstrike that killed civilians and added to a growing anger among Afghan officials about such attacks. The investigators are also trying to determine why the attack lasted as long as it did. Doctors Without Borders said that its staff in Kabul and Washington repeatedly called the military to tell them that the aircraft was firing on a hospital, but the message either went unheeded or did not get through to commanders with the power to stop the attack.
That airstrike, which was called in by German NATO personnel in September 2009 after NATO fuel tankers came under Taliban attack near Kunduz city, killed 142, most of them civilians. In an apparent attempt to justify the strike, Afghan officials have begun saying that there were Taliban insurgents on the south side of the hospital. But Doctors Without Borders has insisted there was no fighting around the hospital at the time of the strike, and that it had sent the American military the precise coordinates of its hospital days before the strike.
The outcry over the strike, and evidence of a coverup by German officials, led to the ouster of the German defense minister and the country’s top military officer. And it intensified outrage over a growing civilian toll from NATO and American airstrikes to the point where such attacks became sharply limited for several years. General Campbell, for his part, was unequivocal when asked on Monday what the rules were on striking a hospital. “Very broadly, we do not strike those kind of targets, absolutely,” he said.
After the news conference, Doctors Without Borders, which said Sunday that it was pulling its operation out of Kunduz, released a statement calling for an independent investigation, and criticizing the shifting American accounts. The military’s “description of the attack keeps changing — from collateral damage, to a tragic incident, to now attempting to pass responsibility to the Afghanistan government,” Christopher Stokes, the general director of Doctors Without Borders, said in the statement.
“The reality is the U.S. dropped those bombs. The U.S. hit a huge hospital full of wounded patients and M.S.F. staff,” his statement continued, referring to the group by the initials of its French name, Médecins Sans Frontières. “The U.S. military remains responsible for the targets it hits, even though it is part of a coalition. There can be no justification for this horrible attack.”
Six years ago, Kunduz was the site of another devastating NATO airstrike that killed civilians and added to a growing anger among Afghan officials about such attacks. That airstrike, which was called in by German NATO personnel in September 2009 after NATO fuel tankers came under Taliban attack near the city, killed 142 people, most of them civilians.
The outcry over the strike, and evidence of a cover-up by German officials, led to the ouster of the German defense minister and the country’s top military officer. And it intensified outrage over a growing civilian toll from NATO and American airstrikes that forced American commanders to sharply limit the condition under which air power could be used.