No justice for victims of US air strike in Afghanistan

Survivors demand an independent investigation into deadly Kunduz hospital attack that US says was not a war crime.


Kathleen Thomas grimly recalls the day when a US warplane flew over in Afghanistan and bombed her intensive care unit.

A survivor of the attack - which killed 42 and wounded dozens of others in the northern city of Kunduz - Thomas recounted seeing patients trapped in their hospital beds and engulfed in flames.

"The strikes tore through the outpatients department, which had become a sleeping area for staff. Our colleagues didn't die peacefully like in the movies," Thomas said.

• "They died painfully, slowly, some of them screaming out for help that never came, alone and terrified, knowing the extent of their own injuries and aware of their impending death. It was a scene of nightmarish horror that will be forever etched in my mind.

"My eyes tear up as the raw grief I feel tugs at my heart," she said. "And the patients… So many bright young lives ripped viciously from this world."

The account is part of Thomas' public testimony released recently by Doctors Without Borders (MSF). The international medical charity operated the hospital in Kunduz that was flattened by a US air strike last October.

Seven months since the deadly attack, survivors and family members of victims have struggled for an elusive justice that may never come. Even though the US government has disciplined more than a dozen personnel, it has still skirted an independent investigation into the air strike, described by MSF as a "war crime"......http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2016/05/justice-victims-air-strike-afghanistan-160501080150552.html
1/5/16
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