Doctors Without Borders: No fighters in Afghan hospital hit by U.S.

No armed combatants were in or near an Afghan hospital hit by a U.S. airstrike last month that killed 30 people, including patients who were burned in their beds and staff gunned down by a circling U.S. gunship as they tried to flee, according to an investigation by Doctors Without Borders.

The international aid organization released its 13-page report Thursday that described the scene of abject horror at the hospital it ran in Kunduz. The attack continued for more than an hour Oct. 3 as Doctors Without Borders officials worked frantically to alert U.S. and other authorities, the report said.

The U.S. previously called the airstrike a "mistake." President Obama expressed his "deepest condolences" for the victims and promised a thorough investigation.

“The view from inside the hospital is that this attack was conducted with a purpose to kill and destroy,” Christopher Stokes, general director of Doctors Without Borders, said in a statement Thursday. “But we don’t know why. We neither have the view from the cockpit, nor the knowledge of what happened within the U.S. and Afghan military chains of command.”

The strikes appeared to focus almost exclusively on the main hospital, where patients filled the intensive care unit and surgeries were underway, the report said. Patients burned in their beds, medical staff were decapitated or had their limbs blown off and others were on fire as they fled the devastation, it added.

Some trying to escape were gunned down by a circling AC-130 gunship, according to the report. Thirteen staff members and 10 patients were among those killed. Two patients died on operating tables. The remains of seven of the dead were so marred that they have yet to be identified.

One medical staff member watched as a patient in a wheelchair was killed by shrapnel while attempting to escape. A doctor whose leg blown had been blown off hastily underwent surgery on a makeshift operating table and died.

"Hospitals have protected status under the rules of war," Joanne Liu, international president of Doctors Without Borders said in the report. Yet, the hospital in Kunduz "came under relentless and brutal aerial attack by U.S. forces."

"This was not a Taliban base," she added.

The attack occurred as Afghanistan security forces, supported by the U.S. military, attempted to recapture Kunduz from Taliban insurgents who had taken the city of 300,000 the week before.

In the days leading up to the attack, Doctors Without Borders reaffirmed the location of the complex with U.S. Defense Department and Army officials in Kabul, as well as the Afghan Ministry of the Interior.

There were 105 patients in the hospital when the attack began, including three or four Afghan government security troops and about 20 Taliban, who were unarmed in line with a policy disallowing weapons on the facility's grounds, the Doctors Without Borders report said.

The Pentagon issued a statement in the days following the airstrikes that "insurgents ... were directly firing upon U.S. servicemembers advising and assisting Afghan security forces." Sediq Sediqi, spokesman for the Afghan Interior Ministry, also insisted that up to 15 enemy fighters were shooting from the hospital.

Two days before the attack, Doctors Without Borders "received a question from a U.S. government official in Washington, D.C., asking whether the hospital or any other of MSF's locations had a large number of Taliban 'holed up' and inquired about the safety of our staff," the report said, using an acronym for the aid group.

The organization replied that its staff were working to full capacity and the hospital was full of patients, including wounded Taliban.