KABUL, Afghanistan — Thirty-three people remain unaccounted for five days after the deadly U.S. bombing of a Doctors Without Borders hospital, the charity's representative in Afghanistan said Thursday.
“We had 461 staff in the hospital working for us in Kunduz trauma center,” Guilhem Molinie told reporters in Kabul. "We are still missing 24 of them. They are unaccounted for.”
"We also know that we may find some other bodies inside the hospital"
He added that 105 patients were inside the hospital when the airstrike hit and nine of them were still unaccounted for on Thursday.
Doctors Without Borders — which is also known as Medecins Sans Frontieres, or MSF — says more than 80 members of staff were also inside the hospital at the time of the bombing.
Saturday’s airstrike killed 22 people. A further 37 people were injured.
Molinie told the press conference that a hotline has been created to ensure that family members and relatives could call in with information about those still missing.
“At the moment we are trying to find trace of any of our staff but also any of our patients,” Molinie added. “We also know that we may find some other bodies inside the hospital, we are waiting for the possibility to access the hospital, or for people who have the capacity to do it, to help us to clarify these numbers.”
President Barack Obama called the charity's chief on Wednesday to apologize for the airstrike, which the Pentagon admitted was a mistake.
Doctors Without Borders said the bombing was a war crime and has called for an unprecedented, independent probe into the incident.
