US says Afghan Doctors Without Borders air strike a ‘mistake’

The US commander of international forces in Afghanistan has said that an air strike on a hospital in the northern city of Kunduz was a mistake.

Gen John Campbell said that the US would never intentionally target a protected medical facility.

At least 22 people were killed in the attack as government forces battled to retake the city from the Taliban.

Campbell also said that the US must consider boosting its military presence in Afghanistan after 2016 to repel a Taliban upsurge and keep up Afghanistan's military to fighting strength.

The medical charity Medecine Sans Frontier (doctors without borders) has called for an independent international inquiry into the Kunduz attack, after launching a twitter campaign to support its demand.

The charity said that statements from the Afghan government implied that the hospital had been deliberately targeted - and amounted to an admission of a war crime.

In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee in Washington, Campbell said: "To be clear, the decision to provide aerial fires was a US decision, made within the US chain of command."

Campbell said that the proposed air strike underwent "rigorous" US military procedures beforehand which were intended to prevent such mistakes. He added that the attack was requested by Afghan forces who were fighting Taliban fighters in Kunduz and that they were in communication with American special operations troops at the scene. Those US forces in turn were in contact with the AC-130 gunship that fired on the hospital, he explained.

"The hospital was mistakenly struck," he said. "We would never intentionally target a protected medical facility."

The Guardian adds that the US account of the attack on Saturday morning had been changed for the fourth time in as many days as Campbell reiterated that Afghan forces had requested US air cover after being engaged in a “tenacious fight” to retake the northern city of Kunduz from the Taliban.

However, it adds, Campbell modified the account he gave at a press conference on Monday, as Campbell had said those Afghan forces had not directly communicated with the US pilots of an AC-130 gunship overhead.