Oops: Obama Apologizes to Doctors Without Borders After Hospital Airstrike
President Obama has officially apologized for the disastrous airstrike that killed 22 people, including a dozen doctors and three children, at a hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan last weekend.
According to The Washington Post, the president made a phone call to Doctors Without Borders on Wednesday. White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest announced the call to reporters:
“This morning from the Oval Office, President Obama spoke by telephone with Doctors Without Borders International President Dr. Joanne Liu, to apologize and express his condolences for the MSF staff and patients who were killed and injured when a US military airstrike mistakenly struck an MSF field hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan over the weekend...When we make a mistake, we’re honest about it, we own up to it, we apologize where necessary as the president did in this case.”
Meanwhile, Médecins Sans Frontières International (Doctors Without Borders) President Dr. Joanne Liu is continuing to call for an independent investigation of the incident, demanding information “to establish what happened in Kunduz, how it happened, and why it happened.”
Doctors Without Borders contends that the strike was a deliberate attack, and wants the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission to open a third-party examination of the events. The organization has called the strike an “attack on the Geneva Conventions” and insists that the act should qualify as a war crime.