Survivors of a US air strike on a hospital in Afghanistan have called for those responsible to go on trial and dismissed an American military investigation that said the bombardment did not amount to a war crime.
The attack on the hospital run by medical charity Doctors Without Borders in the city of Kunduz last October left 42 people dead and sparked global outrage, forcing President Barack Obama to make a rare apology.
The Pentagon on Friday published a report of its investigation into the air strike saying the troops involved in the raid would not face war crimes charges.
“This report is an absolute insult to the victims of MSF hospital in Kunduz,” Esmatullah Esmat, who works as a doctor for the charity, told AFP.
“We do not feel safe after this report, if we go to work, we fear the hospital might come under attack another time,” Esmat said.
“We are very upset and demoralised… We are not satisfied, and we will not go back to work as long as justice is not ensured to our people,” he added.
The bombing last October came as US special forces were deployed to Kunduz alongside Afghan forces in order to recapture the northern city from the Taliban, who had overrun it in one of their dramatic successes of the war.
Despite no fire coming from the hospital, an AC-130 gunship turned its enormous firepower on the target, pummelling it repeatedly over an extended period.
Doctors Without Borders branded the strike a war crime, saying the raid left patients burning in their beds with some victims decapitated and others requiring amputations.
Witnesses told MSF that the main central block of the security facility housing the intensive care unit was targeted precisely, with nearby buildings unscathed, and many patients burned to death in their beds.