WASHINGTON (AP) – Human error, violations of combat rules and untimely equipment failures led to the mistaken U.S. aerial attack on a charity-run hospital in Afghanistan last fall that killed 42 people, a senior American general said Friday. Investigators called the attack a “disproportional response to a threat that didn’t exist.”
Sixteen military members were given administrative punishments that could stall or end careers, but no one faces a court martial. A senior defense official said one of the disciplined was a two-star general.
The AC-130 gunship, bristling with side-firing cannons and guns, fired on the hospital in the northern city of Kunduz for 30 minutes before the mistake was realized and the attack was halted, Gen. Joseph Votel told a news conference as he released the Pentagon’s final report on the incident. The intended target was an Afghan intelligence agency building about 450 yards away.
No one involved knew the targeted compound was a hospital, Votel said, but investigators concluded the U.S. ground and air commanders should have known.
Votel expressed “deepest condolences” to those injured and to the families of those killed and said the U.S. government made “gesture of sympathy” payments of $3,000 to each injured person and $6,000 to each family of the killed.