(article from 'Dispatches' No 79)
In the early morning hours of 3 October, a U.S. gunship repeatedly bombed a Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) hospital in Kunduz, northern Afghanistan. The attacks killed 22 people, including 12 MSF staff and 10 patients, and injured more than three dozen patients and MSF staff. The hospital itself was destroyed, leaving several hundred thousand people without access to emergency trauma care. Survivors have recounted it as a horrifying experience. Beyond that, attacking a protected site such as a hospital is a grave violation of International Humanitarian Law and the Geneva Conventions. The precise GPS coordinates of the
four-year-old MSF hospital in Kunduzwere provided to U.S. and Afghan authorities in Washington and Kabul in the days prior to the bombing, and the hospital contained nearly 200 patients and staff at the time of the attack.
Investigations have been launched by the U.S., NATO, and the Afghan government, but it is impossible to expect the parties involved in the conflict to carry out independent and impartial investigations of acts in which they themselves are implicated.
It was for that reason, and in the name of our killed and wounded colleagues and patients—and for all of our staff and patients worldwide—that MSF called for an independent international investigation into the events of 3 October by the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission (IHFFC), the only permanent body set up specifically to investigate violations of international humanitarian law.
By signing this petition, you can add your voice to these calls and demand that parties to this conflict—and parties to conflicts the world over—respect the statutes of International Humanitarian Law and the Geneva Conventions
Extending the birthday Marilyn, Marion and I headed off for a weekend in the Metrop. Aptly stopped in Waterloo. Headed up the Bakerloo Line to Piccadilly and the intimate Harold Pinter Theatre 
