Afghanistan Times
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AT Monitoring Desk-KABUL: The White House Press Secretary, Josh Earnest, said that Saturday’s airstrike on the MSF hospital in Kunduz that took the lives of 22 people would not be taken as a war crime.
Talking to the newsmen, he said the incident demand a full-scale investigation.
He said that as probe into the incident is underway, it would not be fair to label the incident as a war crime. “I wouldn’t use the label like that because this is something that continues to be under investigation,” he said. Moreover, he said that the incident in its nature was a profound tragedy and the US goes to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties.
Currently, investigation is being undertaken by the Afghan government, Department of Defense, NATO, and we are expecting full accounting that exactly what happened, he said.
“The thing I do think warrants mentioning is that there is no country and no military in the world that goes to greater lengths and places a higher premium on avoiding civilian causalities than the US Department of Defense,” Earnest claimed.
It is worth mentioning that Afghan security forces backed by the US airstrikes had begun an operation to retake Kunduz city from the Taliban insurgent in which a hospital of Medicines Sans Frontiers was also hit. Twenty-two people including 12 staff members of MSF were killed in the incident.
