Patients burned to death as United States bombed charity hospital in Afghanistan
I gave details of what actually occurred in my last post. It is a pity that MSF has decided to leave Kunduz after the tragic event. Now residents of the Afghan city will have to cope with life threatening injuries and illnesses. Certainly, so many will die due to lack of access to medical care. The MSF hospital was the only medical facility in the city equipped to deal with certain emergencies.
MSF has however provided more information as to what actually happened.
The charity said that despite frantic calls to US and Afghan military officials in Kabul and Washington, the attack continued for another 30 minutes, with the main hospital building housing the intensive care unit and emergency rooms being targeted.
“The bombs hit and then we heard the plane circle around,” said Heman Nagarathnam, MSF’s head of programmes in northern Afghanistan.
“There was a pause, and then more bombs hit. This happened again and again. When I made it out from the office, the main hospital building was engulfed in flames.
“Those people that could had moved quickly to the building’s two bunkers to seek safety. But patients who were unable to escape burned to death as they lay in their beds.”
As I have said before and even the United Nations agrees, the United States have no sensible tenable explanation to give for this utter disaster that killed 19 people, including 12 staff members of the Medical Charity and at least seven patients, and wounded dozens more.
US Airstrikes kills and injures many Doctors Without Borders’ Staff in Afghanistan
I’m so short of words to express my anger and disappointment. My heart and prayers are with MSF (Medicens Sans Frontiers — Doctors Without Borders) and the families of their deceased medical staff in this very painful time.
I don’t think the United States will have any sensible explanation to give for their airstrikes raining down heavily on a charity hospital even if it is clearly a mistake. This is just so painful.
Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has said at least nine of its staff have been killed in an overnight bombing of their hospital in the embattled Afghan city of Kunduz.
The attack early on Saturday also wounded 37 people, including 19 MSF staff, the medical charity told AlJazeera.
Officials of MSF later told Reuters that they “frantically phoned” NATO and Washington DC, as bombs rained on the hospital for “nearly an hour”.
NATO said that a US air strike “may have” hit the hospital, which is run by the medical charity, adding that the attack may have resulted in collateral damage.
The MSF hospital is seen as a key medical lifeline in Kunduz, which has been running “beyond capacity” in recent days of fighting which saw the Taliban seize control of the provincial capital for several days.
The trauma centre is the only medical facility in the region that can deal with major injuries.
At the time of the bombing, 105 patients and their caretakers and more than 80 MSF international and national staff were present in the hospital, the charity said.
MSF is of course deeply shocked at bombing of their charity hospital in Kunduz which killed Staff and patients killed. I’m equally shocked! How could the United States go on with an attach they knew could cause serious destruction to a hospital or didn’t they conduct detailed surveys before the attack. I’m more than disappointed! And this is the United States that wants to serve as a moral watchdog to Russia’s military operations in Syria. Shame!
Well done! The Nigerian Government is paying attention to Education for Internally Displaced Children
I must commend the Nigerian Government which has been taking great strides to improve the living and economic conditions of INTERNALLY DISPLACED PERSONS (IDP’s) in the country’s North. The United Nations put the number of persons displaced by Boko Haram activities In the country at about 1.5 million. Since the new government of President Muhammadu Buhari came into power, he has made the plight of the IDP’s one of his priorities. The Vice President, Prof Yemi Osibanjo has also visited some camps for Internally Displaced People in order to learn about their plight firsthand.
The Nigerian Government is also seeing to it that the internally displaced children get an education. Mobile classrooms were installed at the Dalori Internally Displaced Persons camp in Maiduguri, Borno state today September 29th.
Kudos to the Nigerian Government!
Top 10 Google Searches in Syria reveals that Syrians are desperate to flee to Europe
The terms Syrians in Syria search for most frequently on Google show their desperation to leave the war torn country and move to Europe. It also involves terms on how to deal with some medical emergencies. It is just so sad that the war in Syria has dragged on this long, gotten so complicated and left millions suffering.
Al Jazeera in a findings they conducted revealed that the top Google searches coming out of Syria have revealed that Syrians are desperate to flee their war-torn country and many are still planning to seek refuge in Europe.
AJ+ spoke to Google to find out what Syrians are searching for and found that, according to search volumes over the past fortnight, people have been searching for their closest hospitals, how to treat burns at home and how to perform mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
But the most popular search terms were about finding a way to Europe, and more specifically, how to reach Germany.
According to AJ+, the top two searches coming out of Syria are
“immigration to Germany” and “asylum in Germany“.
Syrians are also trying to figure out how to get to Germany, firstly by sea, with the terms “Greece map” and “sea separating Turkey and Greece” the next top searches.
They also want to see “maps of Europe in Arabic” and a “map of Germany”.
AJ+ also found that they are also trying to determine which route is the best to take by searching the distance between the Turkish cities of “Edirne and Izmir”, between “Izmir and Istanbul”, then
“Turkey and Greece”. Then, they want to know the distance on foot between “Macedonia and Serbia”.
As Hungary declares a state of emergency and uses force to prevent
people from entering its borders, the Google searches reveal that high volumes of Syrians are also looking for “news of Hungary and “Hungary Syrian refugees”.
Lotenna Blog 