16 punished, but no criminal charges in US hospital attack

A US gunship attack on a hospital in Afghanistan that killed 42 people occurred because of human errors, process errors and equipment failures and none of the crew knew they were striking a trauma centre, a top US general said Friday.

However, the crew will be disciplined, but they did not commit a war crime, their commander said.

No criminal charges have been levelled against US military personnel for mistakes that resulted in last’s year’s attack on the civilian hospital in Afghanistan operated by the medical charity Doctors Without Borders. The group has called the attack a war crime.

Gen. Joseph Votel, the new head of US Central Command, said that the trauma centre was on a no-strike list but that the gunship crew didn’t have access to the list.

The Pentagon was releasing the full report on the investigation on Friday, including deta-ils about what exactly led a US Air Force special operations AC-130 gunship to bomb the hospital and how those mistakes were made.

According to one senior US official, a two-star general was among about 16 American military personnel disciplined because of the attack. A number of those punished are US special operations forces.

No one was sent to court-martial, officials said. However, in many cases a non-judicial punishment, such as a letter of reprimand or suspension, can effectively end a military career. The officials were not authorised to discuss the case by name and requested anonymity.

The US airstrike in the northern city of Kunduz last October was carried out by one of the most lethal aircraft in the US arsenal. Doctors Without Bord-ers has called the attack “relentless and brutal”.

The Associated Press reported in March that more than a dozen US military personnel had been disciplined in connection with the bombing, and that the punishments were all largely administrative.

The crew of the AC-130 had been dispatched to hit a Taliban command centre.