WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama apologized Wednesday to the president of Doctors Without Borders over the deadly U.S. bombing of a field hospital in Afghanistan, a spokesman said, just a day after the White House stopped short of an apology
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama apologized Wednesday to the president of Doctors Without Borders over the deadly U.S. bombing of a field hospital in Afghanistan, a spokesman said, just a day after the White House stopped short of an apology by citing a lack of information about what led to the attack.
It wasn’t immediately clear what moved Obama to say he was sorry, but “based on what the president has learned,” he thought it was best to “own up to our mistakes and to vow to carry out a full investigation to get to the bottom of exactly what happened,” said White House press secretary Josh Earnest.
The U.S. has been helping Afghan forces trying to retake the northern city of Kunduz, captured by the Taliban last week in the group’s first major claim of territory since the U.S. invaded 14 years ago.
Pentagon officials have given conflicting explanations for how the hospital was bombed Saturday, including both that the bombing was ordered to protect U.S. troops and that Afghan forces under fire requested the strike.
The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John Campbell, told lawmakers Tuesday that the bombing was a mistake and that the decision was carried out through the American chain of command.
Twenty-two people were killed in the attack and dozens wounded in the bombing.
Earnest said that the U.S. “mistakenly struck” the hospital.
On Tuesday, as details came to light, Earnest called the event a “profound tragedy” but said that, before he could “go further than that,” investigators would have to “learn exactly what happened and provide the full accounting that the president has asked for.”
On Wednesday, though, even as investigations were continuing, the White House announced that Obama had just apologized and gave his condolences to the Doctors Without Borders staff and patients who were killed and injured when the U.S. airstrike hit the field hospital.
In a phone call from the Oval Office, Obama expressed regret to the head of the group, Dr. Joanne Liu, and spoke of his high regard for its lifesaving work in vulnerable communities around the world, according to a White House account.
