Doctors Without Borders closes Afghan hospital after bombing

KABUL, Afghanistan _Doctors Without Borders has withdrawn from the northern Afghan city of Kunduz after a series of airstrikes destroyed its hospital.tmpplchld Kate Stegeman, the field communications manager for the group, said it had left “since the hospital is not functional anymore.”tmpplchld “No staff are working in our hospital. All the critical patients have been referred to other health facilities.,” she said.tmpplchld The hospital was hit by a series of airstrikes more than an hour early Saturday. Twelve staff members and at least 10 patients, including three children, were killed. tmpplchld “We have some nonmedical staff keeping an eye on things in the hospital premises. ... I can’t confirm at this stage whether our Kunduz trauma centre will reopen or not,” said Stegeman.tmpplchld Meanwhile, Afghanistan’s government said that it and its coalition partners would send a joint investigation team to northern Afghanistan to investigate the attack, for which the U.S. government has acknowledged it might be responsible.tmpplchld Doctors Without Borders rejected claims that Taliban fighters were firing at Afghan and NATO forces from its hospital before the bombing. It made the statement after the Afghan Defense Ministry alleged that the Taliban fighters had attacked the hospital and were using it “as a human shield.”tmpplchld “The gates of the hospital compound were closed all night so no one that is not staff, a patient or a caretaker was inside the hospital when the bombing happened,” Doctors Without Borders said in a statement. The group said that, according to humanitarian law, any injured person in the hospital would be considered a noncombatant, regardless of what side they may have fought for.tmpplchld “In any case, bombing a fully functioning hospital can never be justified,” the group said.tmpplchld Doctors Without Borders has demanded an independent investigation of the the suspected U.S. airstrike, which they said continued even after military officials in Kabul and Washington were informed of it.tmpplchld The U.S. military confirmed that it conducted an airstrike “in the vicinity” of medical facility, targeting Taliban insurgents firing directly at the US military personnel.tmpplchld “I am aware of an incident that occurred at a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz city today,” Gen. John Campbell, the commander of US forces in Afghanistan, said Saturday.tmpplchld Kunduz has been under siege since the Taliban took over the city on Monday. Afghan security forces have taken back all government buildings, but battles continued in many neighborhoods.tmpplchld “The Afghan Taliban fighters have fled the city or have been killed. But there are foreign insurgents that still resist and have hidden themselves in civilian houses,” said Hamdullah Danishi, the acting governor of Kunduz province.tmpplchld ___tmpplchld (c)2015 Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH (Hamburg, Germany)tmpplchld Visit Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH (Hamburg, Germany) at www.dpa.de/English.82.0.htmltmpplchld Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.tmpplchld