Dozens still missing after U.S. strike on Afghan hospital
Doctors Without Borders, the international aid group whose hospital was hit last weekend by missiles in a U.S. airstrike in Kunduz, Afghanistan, told CBS News Thursday that as many as 24 more of its staff could still be missing amid the rubble of the facility.
The group, which goes by its French acronym MSF, told CBS News' Ahmad Mukhtar in Kabul that the total number of staff still missing dates back to last Monday, when fighting between Afghan forces and Taliban militants who had seized Kunduz began, and that some of those missing were not meant to be at the hospital on the night of the bombing, "but may have come in to help their colleges."
"At the moment the confirmed death toll remains 22, but there are still unidentified bodies in the hospital," MSF's communications manager in Kabul, Kate Stegeman, told CBS News.
Stegeman also said that of the 105 patients who were at the Kunduz hospital, nine were still unaccounted for.
On Wednesday, President Obama called the Afghan President to personally apologize and express his condolences for what the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan called a "mistake."
The U.S. military, NATO and the Afghan government are all conducting investigations into why the hospital was targeted by U.S. aircraft. Initially, U.S. officials said Afghan forces were taking incoming fire from militants near the facility and requested the air support, but that account was later changed.
It is now an open question whether the U.S. strikes could even have violated the rules of engagement for U.S. forces in Afghanistan set forth by President Obama when American military operations concluded in the country.