[In response to a reporter’s questions, Doctors Without
Borders said that this was the first “armed intrusion” at the facility, known
as the Kunduz Trauma Center, since it opened four years ago. The organization
did say there had, in the past, been “tensions” with some of the many armed
groups that operate around Kunduz with varying degrees of allegiance to the
government.]
By Joseph Goldstein and Ahmad
Shakib
 |
| Credit: Google |
KABUL,
Afghanistan — Afghan military commandos raided and searched aDoctors
Without Borders’ hospital in the north of the country, firing
several shots in the air and threatening the staff, the humanitarian group said
Friday.
In a statement, Doctors Without Borders condemned
the “violent intrusion,” which occurred on Wednesday, as a breach of the Geneva Conventions.
The group said that it had temporarily suspended work at the
facility, which is in Kunduz, and is the main trauma hospital in Afghanistan’s
northeast. The hospital has stopped admitting new patients, although the
current patients are still being treated, the organization said.
“This serious event puts at risk the lives of thousands of
people who rely on the center for urgent care,” Dr. Bart Janssens, the
organization’s director of operations, said in the statement.
The local army brigade commander in Kunduz, Colonel Nader,
said he did not believe the army was involved. “Afghan National Army Special
Forces have neither raided any hospital nor arrested anyone whatsoever,” he
said. “We completely deny that Afghan National Army had any involvement at
all.”
Local officials, however, speculated that an army unit from
another part of the country had been involved. Calls seeking clarification from
Interior Ministry officials went unanswered Friday night.
Afghan civilians wounded in crossfire and bomb blasts around
the country usually turn to trauma care hospitals run by nongovernmental
organizations such as Doctors Without Borders or Emergency, an Italian
organization. Patients often come from neighboring provinces to seek care.
The hospitals generally refuse to permit armed men onto the
premises, but they treat not only civilians but also wounded combatants from
both sides of the conflict. “We never take sides,” Dr. Janssens said in the
statement. “Our doctors treat all people according to their medical needs.”
The doctors often offer the best, and usually only,
front-line care in a conflict that is killing and wounding more civilians than
ever before. Civilian casualties from the war exceeded 10,000 people last year,
the highest number since the United Nations began tracking them in Afghanistan
in 2007. That number is expected to increase this year, as the Taliban gains
ground and the fighting grows fiercer between the insurgents and the Afghan
Army and police forces, which number more than 300,000 strong.
Doctors Without Borders has been operating in Afghanistan
for some 30 years, although it did withdraw from Afghanistan for a five-year
stretch after five of its staff members were shot to death in 2004.
Kunduz, a commercial city not far from the border with
Tajikistan, has been threatened by the Taliban since April, with fighting
encroaching into the city’s outskirts. The government has rushed forces in from
around the country to fight the insurgents.
In response to a reporter’s questions, Doctors Without
Borders said that this was the first “armed intrusion” at the facility, known
as the Kunduz Trauma Center, since it opened four years ago. The organization
did say there had, in the past, been “tensions” with some of the many armed
groups that operate around Kunduz with varying degrees of allegiance to the
government.
“However, we have always managed to resolve problems through
dialogue,” it said. “Up until now, we have been able to ensure a safe, neutral
space, in which staff can provide medical care to our patients. We’re therefore
extremely concerned by such a violent intrusion into the hospital.”
Some details of what occurred on Wednesday remain unclear,
in part because the organization would not say whom the soldiers were searching
for when they entered the hospital. But in the early afternoon, the group's
statement said, heavily armed men who said they belonged to the Afghan Special
Forces entered the hospital and “cordoned off the facility and began shooting
in the air.”
The soldiers assaulted three staff members and eventually
arrested three patients, the group said. At one point, a staff member was
threatened at gunpoint. The episode ended when the men released the patients
and left on their own. It does not appear that the three patients who had been
detained were the target of the raid.
In an interview, a member of the provincial council in
Kunduz, Mohammad Yousaf Ayubi, said “the raid ended after the Special Forces
finished their search and were satisfied that they were tipped with wrong intel
and they left without arresting anyone.”
Mr. Ayubi, who had a conversation with a hospital staff
member following the incident, said the staff member had told him the soldiers
had apparently been searching for the top Taliban official in Kunduz, who they
believed was receiving treatment at the facility.
“With regard to who the Afghan Special Forces were looking
for, we understand that they were looking for a specific individual, but we are
unable to confirm who,” the group said.
Another member of the provincial council, Ghulam Rabani,
said that in addition to the Taliban official the troops were also searching
for an Al Qaeda operative believed to have received a recent war injury.
The identity of the soldiers said to be involved in the raid
remains unclear. Mr. Rabani said his understanding was that the troops belonged
to a special forces police unit from Kandahar Province, in the country’s south,
who had been deployed to Kunduz to reinforce a recent government offensive to
push back the Taliban from the districts surrounding the city.
