Doctors Without Borders: Gunfire targeted victims fleeing burning hospital

GENEVA, Switzerland, Nov. 5 (UPI) -- Doctors Without Borders said volunteers and patients were shot by a gunship while fleeing a burning Kunduz, Afghanistan, hospital bombed by a U.S.-led NATO coalition last month.

The Swiss-based, non-governmental organization, officially named Medecins sans Frontieres, or MSF, blasted the coalition for the attack that killed at least 30 doctors and patients in October in a report released Thursday.

The hospital was hit with sustained fire from a U.S. aircraft over a one-hour period in the early morning of Oct. 3. The 13-page report blamed the incident on the U.S.-led NATO coalition for violating the hospital's neutral status.

"Patients burned in their beds, medical staff were decapitated and lost limbs, and others were shot by the circling AC-130 gunship while fleeing the burning building. At least 30 MSF staff and patients were killed," the report reads.

The report specifically and repeatedly notes there was no fighting in the vicinity before the airstrikes occurred.

"Not a single MSF staff member reported the presence of armed combatants or fighting in or from the hospital compound prior to or during the airstrikes."

For a week before the incident, U.S. military jets conducted airstrikes in the area, as Taliban forces overwhelmed Afghan soldiers. The review indicates the hospital treated the combatants that week, averaging 117 patients per day.

The hospital has not reopened since the attack.

The review asks for an investigation by the NATO coalition of the motives and reasons the hospital was hit with airstrikes, as well as a "widely agreed-upon and unambiguous recognition of the practical rules under which hospitals operate in conflict zones."