U.S. Investigation Cited ‘Human Error’ as the Main Cause of the Afghan Hospital Bombing

The investigation into the attack of an Afghan hospital on Oct. 3 concluded that the strike was a tragic accident that was the result of human error, a U.S. military commander revealed reported by Reuters.

The strike hit a Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) run hospital located in Kunduz, a northern city in Afghanistan, and killed at least 30 people and injured many more.

"This was a tragic mistake. U.S. forces would never intentionally strike a hospital or other protected facilities," U.S. Army General John Campbell, the commander of international and U.S. forces in Afghanistan, said.

According to the probe, the crew of an AC-130 gunship shot at the hospital believing that it was their targeted compound. Both locations had similar visual descriptions, the investigation said. The compound, which belonged to the Afghanistan secret service, the National Directorate of Security (NDS) but was believed to have been taken over by the Taliban, was several hundred yards away.

The attack started at 2:08 a.m. At about 12 minutes after the strike began, the facility had called to let the U.S. know that they were being attacked. The forces realized their mistake at 2:37 a.m.

The investigation did not find any evidence that the crew knew that they were shooting a hospital as opposed to their target. It did, however, find that there were several other mistakes aside from the location.

Campbell said that the gunship left for the mission earlier than it was supposed and ended up missing out on a normal brief that could have identified the Doctors Without Borders hospital.

"Tragically, misidentification continued throughout the remainder of the operation," Campbell said.

President Barack Obama has apologized for the attack.