Commander of war in Afghanistan tells Senate panel that US forces had called in airstrike at Afghan request – ‘an admission of a war crime’ says MSF chief 
 
 US special operations forces – not their Afghan allies – called in the deadly airstrike on the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, the US commander has conceded. 
 
 
 
 Shortly before General John Campbell, the commander of the US and Nato war in Afghanistan, testified to a Senate panel, the president of Doctors Without Borders – also known as Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) – said the US and Afghanistan had made an “admission of a war crime”. 
 
 Shifting the US account of the Saturday morning airstrike for the fourth time in as many days, 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. But, modifying the account he gave at a press conference on Monday, Campbell said those Afghan forces had not directly communicated with the US pilots of an AC-130 gunship overhead. 
 
 “Even though the Afghans request that support, it still has to go through a rigorous US procedure to enable fires to go on the ground. We had a special operations unit that was in close vicinity that was talking to the aircraft that delivered those fires,” Campbell told the Senate armed services committee on Tuesday morning. 
 
 MSF hospital airstrike: who are the victims? Read more 
 
 The airstrike on the hospital is among the worst and most visible cases of civilian deaths caused by US forces during the 14-year Afghanistan war that Barack Obama has declared all but over. It killed 12 MSF staff and 10 patients, who had sought medical treatment after the Taliban overran Kunduz last weekend. Three children died in the airstrike that came in multiple waves and burned patients alive in their beds. 
 
 On Tuesday, MSF denounced Campbell’s press conference as an attempt to shift blame to the Afghans. 
 
 “The US military remains responsible for the targets it hits, even though it is part of a coalition,” said its director general, Christopher Stokes. 
 
 Campbell did not explain whether the procedures to launch the airstrike took into account the GPS coordinates of the MSF field hospital, which its president, Joanne Liu, said were “regularly shared” with US, coalition and Afghan military officers and civilian officials, “as recently as Tuesday 29 September”. 
 
 AC-130 gunships, which fly low, typically rely on a pilot visually identifying a target. 
 
 
 
 It is also unclear where the US special operations forces were relative to the fighting, but Campbell has said that US units were “not directly engaged in the fighting”. 
 
 Campbell instead said the hospital was “mistakenly struck” by US forces. 
 
 “We would never intentionally target a protected medical facility,” Campbell told US lawmakers, declaring that he wanted an investigation by his command to “take its course” instead of providing further detail. 
 
 But Jason Cone, Doctors Without Borders’ US executive director, said Campbell’s shifting story underscored the need for an independent inquiry. 
 
 “Today’s statement from General Campbell is just the latest in a long list of confusing accounts from the US military about what happened in Kunduz on Saturday,” Cone said. 
 
 
 
 International criminal court must investigate bombing of Afghan hospital | Letters Read more 
 
 “They are now back to talking about a ‘mistake’. A mistake that lasted for more than an hour, despite the fact that the location of the hospital was well known to them and that they were informed during the airstrike that it was a hospital being hit. All this confusion just underlines once again the crucial need for an independent investigation into how a major hospital, full of patients and MSF staff, could be repeatedly bombed.” 
 
 
 
 Campbell suggested but did not say that the Afghans were taking fire from the Taliban from within the hospital grounds, a claim the Afghan government has explicitly made. MSF unequivocally denies that the hospital was a source of fire. It has also noted the precision of the strike that hit only the main hospital building and not its adjuncts. 
 
 Mary Ellen O’Connell, a professor of international law at the University of Notre Dame, said that according to international humanitarian law, the critical question for determining if US forces committed a war crime was whether they had notified the hospital ahead of the strike if they understood the Taliban to be firing from the hospital. 
 
 
 
 “Any serious violation of the law of armed conflict, such as attacking a hospital that is immune from intentional attack, is a war crime. Hospitals are immune from attack during an armed conflict unless being used by one party to harm the other and then only after a warning that it will be attacked,” O’Connell said. 
 
 The US account has now shifted four times in four days. On Saturday, the US military said it did not know for certain that it had struck the hospital but that US forces were taking fire in Kunduz. 
 
 On Sunday, it said that the strike took place in the “vicinity” of the hospital and suggested it had been accidentally struck. On Monday, Campbell said that the Afghans requested the strike and said US forces in the area were not “threatened”. 
 
 On Tuesday, he clarified that US forces called in the airstrike themselves at Afghan request. 
 
 Meanwhile, the defense secretary, Ashton Carter, said in a statement on Tuesday, that the Department of Defense “deeply regrets the loss of innocent lives that resulted from this tragic event”. 
 
 Doctors Without Borders has demanded an independent inquiry, rejecting the three current investigations – by the US, Nato and the Afghans – as compromised by their partiality. 
 
 
 
 “This attack cannot be brushed aside as a mere mistake or an inevitable consequence of war. Statements from the Afghanistan government have claimed that Taliban forces were using the hospital to fire on coalition forces. These statements imply that Afghan and US forces working together decided to raze to the ground a fully functioning hospital, which amounts to an admission of a war crime,” Liu said on Tuesday. 
 
 In the past, the US has upbraided both allies and adversaries over the indiscriminate use of aerial strikes. 
 
 On Thursday, the US defense secretary said Russia was pouring “gasoline on the fire” of the Syrian civil war after it launched a campaign of airstrikes against opponents of Moscow’s ally Bashar al-Assad. 
 
 A day later, the National Security Council spokesman, Ned Price, said the White House was “deeply concerned” that its Saudi ally in the Yemen conflict had bombed a wedding party, something the US itself did in Yemen in 2013. 
 
 When Israel shelled a UN school in Gaza housing thousands of displaced Palestinians in August 2014, a State Department spokesman said the US was “appalled” by the “disgraceful” attack. 
 
 Addressing Tuesday’s committee hearing, Campbell confirmed that he has recommended to Obama that the US retain thousands of troops in Afghanistan beyond Obama’s presidency – reversing a plan to reduce the force to one focused on protecting the US embassy in Kabul. 
 
 He argued for “strategic patience” in the longest war in US history, which has now stretched five years longer than the failed Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. ||||| WASHINGTON (AP) — The deadly American attack on a hospital in northern Afghanistan occurred despite "rigorous" U.S. military procedures designed to avoid such mistakes, the top commander of U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan said Tuesday. 
 
 U.S. Forces-Afghanistan Resolute Support Mission Commander Gen. John Campbell testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2015, before the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the... (Associated Press) 
 
 U.S. Forces-Afghanistan Resolute Support Mission Commander Gen. John Campbell arrives on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2015, to testify before the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing... (Associated Press) 
 
 U.S. Forces-Afghanistan Resolute Support Mission Commander Gen. John Campbell pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2015, before the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing... (Associated Press) 
 
 Gen. John F. Campbell also told a Senate committee that he thinks President Barack Obama should revise the current plan to reduce the U.S. force in Afghanistan at the end of 2016. The plan calls for cutting the force from 9,800 to about 1,000 embassy-based security. 
 
 Campbell said he had provided his superiors with several options because conditions in Afghanistan have changed significantly since Obama approved that troop-cut plan in 2014. 
 
 Testifying three days after the medical clinic strike that killed at least 22 people, Campbell said Afghan forces requested air support Saturday while engaged in combat with Taliban fighters in the city of Kunduz, communicating with U.S. special operations troops at the scene. Those U.S. forces were in contact with the AC-130 gunship that fired on the medical clinic run by Doctors Without Borders, he added. 
 
 "To be clear, the decision to provide (airstrikes) was a U.S. decision, made within the U.S. chain of command," Campbell said. "The hospital was mistakenly struck. We would never intentionally target a protected medical facility." 
 
 In his appearance before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Campbell said he could not provide more details about what happened, including who may have failed to follow procedures for avoiding attacks on hospitals. He said he must await the outcome of multiple investigations. Campbell had disclosed on Monday that the attack had been requested by Afghan troops. 
 
 Anti-war protesters sat in the front row of Tuesday's hearing with red coloring, depicting blood, on their faces. They carried signs that read: "Healthcare not warfare," and "Kunduz victims: RIP." A woman who shouted "Bombing hospitals is a war crime! Stop the bombing now!" was escorted from the room. The chairman, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., warned that those interfering with the hearing risked arrest. 
 
 On troop levels, Campbell said the ability to train Afghan forces and conduct counterterrorism operations would be restricted if the number of U.S. troops were to drop to 1,000 by the end of next year. 
 
 "If you go to just embassy only, our ability to do TAA (train, advise and assist) is very limited. Our ability to do CT (counterterror operations) is much more limited," Campbell said. He said the different options that he has provided to his superiors are for troop levels beyond a normal embassy presence. 
 
 Asked if he thought the president should review his plan, Campbell said "Yes, sir." 
 
 Defense Secretary Ash Carter said Monday the Pentagon is providing options to the White House and Obama will be making decisions about future force levels later this fall. 
 
 Campbell has said the airstrike, now under investigation, was requested by Afghan forces who reported being under Taliban fire. It's unclear whether the clinic was targeted in error or whether U.S. military personnel followed procedure. They are required to verify that the target of a requested airstrike is valid before firing. 
 
 Christopher Stokes, general director of Doctors Without Borders, has said "there can be no justification for this horrible attack" and that it was critical to conduct "a full transparent independent investigation." 
 
 Kunduz has been the scene of heavy fighting in recent days. 
 
 A Taliban assault on Kunduz took Afghan authorities by surprise and embarrassed President Ashraf Ghani's administration. The Taliban, who attacked on multiple fronts, held the city for three days before a government counter-offensive began. Afghan forces have retaken Kunduz, an important city on the Tajikistan border, a hub for drug and gun smuggling to and from Central Asian countries. 
 
 ___ 
 
 Associated Press writers Robert Burns and Lolita C. Baldor contributed to this report. ||||| WASHINGTON — The American commander in Afghanistan now believes that United States troops probably did not follow their own rules in calling in the airstrike that decimated a Doctors Without Borders hospital when no American and Afghan troops were in extreme danger, according to officials with direct knowledge of the general’s thinking. 
 
 Under the rules, airstrikes are authorized to kill terrorists, protect American troops and help Afghans who request support in battles — like those in Kunduz, recently taken over by the Taliban — that can change the military landscape. The idea is to give troops leeway but keep Americans out of daily, open-ended combat. 
 
 The Special Operations Forces most likely did not meet any of the criteria, the commander, Gen. John F. Campbell, has said in private discussions, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter. 
 
 The Special Operations Forces also apparently did not have “eyes on” — that is, were unable to positively identify — the area to be attacked to confirm it was a legitimate target before calling in the strike, the officials said.
– Details continue to emerge about Saturday's bombing of a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, with the US military commander in Afghanistan testifying Tuesday that it was due to US directive. "To be clear, the decision to provide aerial fires was a US decision made within the US chain of command," Gen. John Campbell told the Senate Armed Services Committee, per the New York Times. "A hospital was mistakenly struck. We would never intentionally target a protected medical facility." But the nonprofit—also known by its French initials, MSF—wants to know why the official US story has had four incarnations since the airstrike and claims the US is simply trying blame the Afghans, the Guardian reports. "The US military remains responsible for the targets it hits, even though it is part of a coalition," the MSF director said Tuesday. First the US claimed it wasn't sure it had struck the hospital, followed by a statement Sunday that the bombing—which killed at least 22, per the AP—was accidental. On Monday Campbell said it was the Afghans who requested the airstrike, while in Tuesday's testimony, he said the pilots of the US AC-130 gunship didn't have direct communication with Afghan forces, but with US special forces on the ground who called in the strike—an admission that has MSF fuming. "Statements from the Afghanistan government have claimed that Taliban forces were using the hospital to fire on coalition forces," MSF President Joanne Liu said Tuesday, a claim MSF denies. "These statements imply that Afghan and US forces working together decided to raze to the ground a fully functioning hospital, which amounts to an admission of a war crime." Doctors Without Borders says it wants an impartial probe—i.e., not by the US, Afghanistan, or NATO, the Guardian notes. (It could be tough proving the bombing was a war crime.)