Why Bombing A Hospital Is A War Crime
By Robert C. Koehler for Common Wonders, “We tried to take a look into one of the burning buildings. I cannot describe what was inside. There are no words for how terrible it was. In the Intensive Care Unit six patients were burning in their beds.” So said Lajos Zoltan Jecs, a nurse at the hospital the U.S. bombed in Kunduz, Afghanistan, killing 22 people: doctors, staff, patients (including three children). This image is now spiraling through the Internet and across the global consciousness. The hospital was not “collateral damage”; it was deliberately targeted, deliberately destroyed, in multiple bombing runs that lasted at least half an hour. Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), which operated the hospital, contacted its sources in the U.S. government immediately, pleading for the attack to stop — to no avail.