Interesting that as I checked, while NATO commits a war crime in Afghanistan the western media is silent about Russia's airstrikes on ISIS. The Empire's in trouble.
‘Patients
were burning in their beds’: Witnesses recall horrific Kunduz
hospital airstrike
RT,
3
October, 2015
Afghan
child receiving treatment at a Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF)
hospital in the northern city of Kunduz © Shah Marai / AFP
Seeing
their colleagues and patients die was a horrifying shock, according
to survivors of the deadly air raid on a hospital in Afghanistan. The
tragedy, medical staff said, simply cannot be dismissed as
“collateral damage” from a botched airstrike.
On bombing of @MSF hospital in Kunduz: "We cannot accept that this horrific loss of life will simply be dismissed as ‘collateral damage.’”
— MSF International (@MSF) October 3, 2015
Recalling
the tense minutes of continuous airstrikes which hit the Medecins
Sans Frontieres (MSF) hospital in Kunduz, NGO staff said that the
destruction of the hospital is nothing short of a “grave
violation of international humanitarian law.”
The
aerial bombing raids took place between 2:08am and 3:15am local time
and were carried out at approximately 15 minute intervals, with the
main hospital building being “repeatedly
hit very precisely” during
each raid, MSF said. The tragedy happened despite the fact that MSF
had provided the US-led command with the GPS coordinates of the
hospital to make sure that the hospital would not be hit.
#MSF staff saving lives after being bombed in Kunduz. Don't cal it collateral damagehttp://t.co/XUxHyvtI5cpic.twitter.com/8U2yguxegv
— Sergio Cecchini (@SergioCecchini) October 3, 2015
A
survivor of the horrific bombardment, MSF nurse Lajos Zoltan Jecs,
who had been inside the facility during the attack, described the
airstrikes as “absolutely
terrifying.”
“At
first there was confusion and dust settling” he
said, as cited by the MSF website. “As
we were trying to work out what was happening, there was more
bombing.”
“The
bombs hit and then we heard the plane circle round,” recalled
Heman Nagarathnam, MSF’s head of programs in northern
Afghanistan. “There
was a pause, and then more bombs hit. This happened again and again.”
Zoltan
remembers seeing one of the emergency room nurses sustain massive
trauma to his arm.
“He
was covered in blood, with wounds all over his body. At that point my
brain just couldn't understand what was happening. For a second I was
just stood still, shocked,” Zoltan
said.
When
the bombing stopped, some of the survivors left their shelters
looking for those who could possibly have remained alive. Others, in
a panic, tried to escape to safety, as the main hospital building was
engulfed in flames.
“We
tried to take a look into one of the burning buildings. I cannot
describe what was inside. There are no words for how terrible it
was,” Zoltan
said.
“In
the intensive care unit six patients were burning in their beds,” he dded.
UPDATED: US continued bombing Afghan hospital despite @MSF pleashttp://t.co/LyX2491BVHpic.twitter.com/FWClkdi7PQ
— teleSUR English (@telesurenglish) October 3, 2015
“Those
people that could, had moved quickly to the building’s two bunkers
to seek safety. But patients who were unable to escape burned to
death as they lay in their beds,” Nagarathnam remember.
One
patient was left in the operating room on the table “dead,
in the middle of the destruction,” the
nurse recalled.
Urgent
surgery was carried out on one of the doctors on the office table but
he did not survive. Zoltan remembers that there were “too
many that we couldn’t help.”
#MSF zonal hospital in #Kunduz bombed by US planes, Dozens of medics, patients died...!pic.twitter.com/bKPuqnINpL
— Inayat ullah kakar (@Kalamnigar) October 3, 2015
Eltaf
Najafizada, a freelance journalist for RT, found out about the death
of his friend Aminullah Salarzai on social media. He had worked at
the hospital as a doctor.
“It’s
a really sad moment concerning the death of my friend. He was in his
20’s and was engaged. He worked as a physician at the Doctors
Without Borders hospital. He was loved by all those around him. I
really miss him.”
Dr. Aminullah Salarzai, killed last night in #Kunduz Doctors Without Borders's hospital.#Afghanistanpic.twitter.com/fDRLDFQTm9
— Bashir Ahmad Gwakh (@bashirgwakh) October 3, 2015
The
charity has confirmed 19 deaths, 12 of whom were staff. Four were
adult patients, along with three children. A further 37 were left
wounded. At the time of the bombing, 105 patients, and more than 80
MSF international and national staff were in the hospital.
From
Glenn Greenwald
Yesterday
afternoon, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power
marched to Twitter to proclaim:
“we call on Russia to immediately cease attacks on Syrian
oppo[sition and] civilians.” Along with that decree, she
posted a statement from the U.S. and several of its closest
authoritarian allies – including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the
UK – warning Russia that civilian casualties “will only fuel more
extremism and radicalization.”
Early
this morning, in the Afghan city of Kunduz, the U.S. dropped
bombs on
a hospital run by Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières
(MSF)). The airstrike killed at least 9 of the hospital’s medical
staff, and seriously injured dozens of patients. “Among the dead
was the Afghan head of the hospital, Abdul Sattar,” reported The
New York Times.
Jason
Cone, MSF’s Executive Director, said the
medical charity “condemns in the strongest possible terms the
horrific bombing of its hospital in Kunduz full of staff and
patients.” He added that
“all parties [to the] conflict, including in Kabul &
Washington, were clearly informed of precise GPS Coordinates of
MSF facilities in Kunduz,” and that the
“precise location of MSF Kunduz hospital [was] communicated to
all parties on multiple occasions over past months, including on
9/29.” Worst of all, from MSF itself:
Bombing
continued for >30 minutes after American & Afghan military
officials in Kabul & Washington first informed of proximity to
hospital.
— MSF International (@MSF) October 3, 2015
For
its part, the U.S. military in Afghanistan issued
a statement acknowledging
that it carried out airstrikes, claimed they were
conducted “against individuals threatening the force,” and
conceded that “the strike may have resulted in collateral damage to
a nearby medical facility.” But the NYT reported:
“From early on, the Taliban had respected the hospital’s request
not to bring weapons inside, according to staff members, and the
hospital had been a refuge in the shattered city of Kunduz. It was a
place where the wounded from all sides were treated.”
The
medical organization noted that
“our hospital in Kunduz was the only one of its kind in
NorthEastern Afghanistan.” It referenced a now-poignant tweet it
posted earlier in the week:
Since early Monday morning, our medical teams in Kunduz,#Afghanistan have treated 252 wounded, including 53 childrenpic.twitter.com/hjmhYMSdpS
— MSF Canada (@MSF_canada) September 30, 2015
Now,
however, the Twitter accounts of various MSF branches are filled
with horrific photographs of
their staff traumatized and their hospital burning as a result of
U.S. bombs:
Photos of aftermath of the bombing that left 3 staff dead & many ppl wounded. #Afghanistan http://t.co/pjecwxuPSspic.twitter.com/OnSZXwc2x9
— MSF UK Press Office (@MSF_Press) October 3, 2015
This
strike on a hospital in Afghanistan comes days after the Saudi-led
coalition bombed a wedding in Yemen that killed
more than 130 people.
After days of silence from the U.S. Government – which has
actively participated from the start in the heinous
bombing of Yemen – Ambassador
Power finally
acknowledged the
wedding massacre, but treated it like some natural disaster that has
nothing to do with the U.S.: “Terrible news from Yemen of killing
of innocent civilians & aid workers. Urgently need pol solution
to crisis,” she tweeted.
Her
accompanying statement claimed that “the United States has no role
in the targeting decisions made by the Coalition in Yemen,” but
yesterday, the Saudi Foreign Minister told CBS
News that
“We work with our allies including the United States on these
targets.” There’s no dispute that the U.S. has lavished the
Saudis with all sorts of weapons and intelligence as it carries out
its civilian-massacring
attacks on Yemen.
This
last week has been a particularly gruesome illustration of
continuous U.S. conduct under the War on Terror banner,
including under the Nobel Peace Prize-winning president who
celebrates himself for “ending two wars” (in the same
two countries where the U.S. continues to drop bombs).
The formula by now is clear: bombing whatever countries it wants,
justifying it all by reflexively labeling their targets as
“terrorists,” and then dishonestly denying or casually dismissing
the civilians they slaughter as “collateral damage.” If one were
to construct a list of all the countries in the world based on their
credibility to condemn Russia for using
this exact rhetorical template in Syria,
the U.S. would literally be last on that list.
UPDATE:
U.S. officials went to TIME Magazine yesterday to
announce that
Russia will be creating more terrorists than they kill as a result of
misguided airstrikes in Syria. “We believe if you inadvertently
kill innocent men, women and children, then there’s a backlash from
that,” Lieut. General Bob Otto, the Air Force’s deputy chief of
staff for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance said. “We
might kill three and create 10 terrorists. It really goes back to the
question of are we killing more than were making?”
It’s
impossible to fathom what the U.S. media would be saying and doing if
Russia did something like this in Syria. By contrast, the reaction to
this airstrike by their own government will be muted and filled
with apologia,
ironically quite similar to the widely
vilified caricature of
Jeb Bush’s comments about the Oregon shooting spree: “stuff
happens.”
UPDATE
II:
Al Jazeera reports that
the hospital bombed by the U.S. “is the only medical facility in
the region that can deal with major injuries.” Nonetheless,
“officials of MSF … told Reuters that they ‘frantically phoned’
NATO and Washington DC, as bombs rained on the hospital for ‘nearly
an hour.'”
UPDATE
III:
The latest casualty figures from MSF:
LATEST: 16 ppl killed – 9 MSF staff, 7 patients (3 children). 37 injured – 19 staff (5 critical) & 18 patients & caretakers. #Afghanistan
— MSF UK (@MSF_uk) October 3, 2015
Speaking
to the nation just three days ago about the Oregon shooting spree,
Barack Obama said:
“This is a political choice that we make, to allow this to happen
every few months…” That applies to a lot more than that incident.
UPDATE
IV:
Several reports suggest that this hospital has been viewed with
hostility because it treats all injured human beings, regardless of
which side they’re on. “The hospital treated the wounded from all
sides of the conflict, a policy that has long irked the Afghan
security forces,” reports the NYT. Al
Jazeera notes that “a caretaker
at the hospital, who was severely injured in the air strike, told Al
Jazeera that clinic’s medical staff did not favour any side the
conflict. ‘We are here to help and treat civilians,’ Abdul Manar
said.” That same caretaker added: “Several women and children are
also killed in the strike. I could hear them screaming for help
inside the hospital while it was set ablaze by the bombing. We are
terrified and speechless.”
UPDATE
V:
The U.N. human rights chief has denounced
the U.S. airstrike as
“tragic, inexcusable, and possibly even criminal.”
This
is not the first time this has happened. In 2004, U.S. airstrikes in
Falluja, Iraq hit
a hospital and
“razed it to the ground.”
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