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After a series of different explanations and excuses — four separate accounts of the incident over the first four days, by The Guardian's count — the United States still hasn't provided a concrete explanation as to why and how the hospital was targeted, killing 22 doctors and patients. The attack was the worst on any Doctors Without Borders hospital in its 44 years of operating.
But it wasn't all that different from other recent U.S. attacks on civilian infrastructure. Since as far back as 1991, the U.S. has been "accidentally" blowing up medical and humanitarian facilities in a range of places, resulting in high civilian casualties and other "collateral damage."
To name but a few, in 1991 the U.S. targeted an air raid shelter in Baghdad, killing 408 Iraqi civilians. (A U.S. general claimed the shelter was "an active command-and-control center.") In 1998 the Clinton administration attacked the Al Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Sudan, which the U.S. claimed was associated with the bin Laden network and was "involved in the production of materials for chemical weapons." As a result, according to The Intercept, "tens of thousands of people have suffered and died" from "treatable diseases" in the country since then. In 2001, the U.S. attacked the complex that housed the International Committee of the Red Cross in Kabul — not once but twice, destroying storage warehouses that held food and supplies for refugees.
The incident in Kunduz, unfortunately, just adds to the list.
Comment: How can the US government justify bombing an independent hospital that treats victims of war on all sides? They can't, so instead they will stonewall. There is no good reason for the US to refuse an independent investigation, other than it will reveal that they knowingly bombed innocent people, in a hospital no less. The only description one can give to such behavior is evil.