The death toll from a US air strike on an Afghan hospital has risen to at least 24 with two more Doctors Without Borders (MSF) staff now presumed dead, the organisation said today.
Twenty-two other MSF staff who were missing have now been accounted for after the organisation was able to make contact with them, a spokeswoman told AFP.
Nine patients remain missing after the October 3 strike as MSF continues to try and trace their whereabouts, she said.
MSF added that an international fact-finding commission it had called on to probe the strike, which prompted global revulsion, had sent letters to the US and Afghan governments seeking their agreement for it to launch an investigation.
"We have received apologies and condolences, but this is not enough. We are still in the dark about why a well-known hospital full of patients and medical staff was repeatedly bombarded for more than an hour," said Dr Joanne Liu, MSF International President.
"We need to understand what happened and why."
The Pentagon announced on the weekend it would make compensation payments for those killed and injured in the attack, which caused MSF to close the hospital's trauma centre, seen as a lifeline in a war-battered region with scant medical care.
