Beirut
The bombing of the DoctorsWithoutBorders/Medicine Sans Frontiers (MSF) hospital at Kunduz is a punishable war crime and the Pentagon stands indicted and must be held accountable depending on the findings of fact.
Massive international customary law and a host of treaties and conventions in force, including the Geneva Conventions specifically protect medical facilities and their medical staffs and patients make this plain.
Given also that many facts of this case are no longer credibly deniable, with respect to no warnings being given by the US military before the attack, no evidence fighters were firing from the site, hospital staff sending to NATO and the US and Afghan militaries its quadrants, as recently as two weeks ago, for its well-known four years operation of the largest hospital in Kunduz, to mention just a few.
Under accepted principles, standards and rules of International law the question of whether an advance warning was given to staff at Kunduz hospital is critical in determining if US forces had committed a grave breach of international humanitarian law.
This is recognized by the June 2015 Department of Defense Law of War Manual (LWM) on adherence to the rules of war. It is required for study by US forces everywhere who supposedly review the manual periodically and are tested on its rules via written exams. The manual explicitly requires such notification: " Protection for civilian hospitals may cease only after due warning has been given, naming, in all appropriate cases, a reasonable time limit, and after such warning has remained unheeded.
Admittedly we are still in the dark and vulnerable to misstatements and word games from the Afghans and the US military which as is now widely known include many denials, misstatements, blame the terrorists, clarifications and 'corrections' with seemingly half a dozen new possible theories. Part of this is understandable but by now the US military surely has the full accurate accounts from it and the Afghan forces of what exactly happened, why and how.
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