Updated: Oct 5th 9.30 AM EST: Kabul – At 2:10am on Saturday 3 October the Médecins Sans Frontières’ (MSF) Trauma centre in Kunduz was hit several times during sustained bombing and was very badly damaged.
Latest update is that twelve staff members and 10 patients, including three children, were killed; 37 people were injured including 19 staff members, during the bombing last night of MSF’s hospital in Kunduz. The international medical organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) condemns in the strongest possible terms the horrific aerial bombing of its hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan.
“We are deeply shocked by the attack, the killing of our staff and patients and the heavy toll it has inflicted on healthcare in Kunduz,” says Bart Janssens, MSF Director of Operations. “We do not yet have the final casualty figures, but our medical team are providing first aid and treating the injured patients and MSF personnel and accounting for the deceased. We urge all parties to respect the safety of health facilities and staff.”
Since fighting broke out on Monday, MSF has treated 394 wounded. When the aerial attack occurred this morning we had 105 patients and their care-takers in the hospital and over 80 MSF international and national staff present.
MSF’s hospital is the only facility of its kind in the whole north-eastern region of Afghanistan, providing free life- and limb-saving trauma care. MSF doctors treat all people according to their medical needs and do not make distinctions based on a patient’s ethnicity, religious beliefs or political affiliation.
MSF had informed all fighting parties of hospital GPS coordinates
MSF condemns in the strongest possible terms the horrific bombing of its hospital in Kunduz full of staff and patients. MSF wishes to clarify that all parties to the conflict, including in Kabul and Washington, were clearly informed of the precise location (GPS Coordinates) of the MSF facilities – hospital, guest-house, office and an outreach stabilization unit in Chardara (to the north-west of Kunduz). As MSF does in all conflict contexts, these precise locations were communicated to all parties on multiple occasions over the past months, including most recently on 29 September.
The bombing continued for more than 30 minutes after American and Afghan military officials in Kabul and Washington were first informed. MSF urgently seeks clarity on exactly what took place and how this terrible event could have happened.
This article appears in full on MSF website: http://www.msf.org/article/afghanistan-msf-staff-killed-and-hospital-partially-destroyed-kunduz#pr