War crimes prosecutions are rare in cases of hospital bombings - latimes

Red crosses painted on the roofs of hospitals are supposed to protect the facilities and their patients from the ravages of war under the Geneva Conventions that have sought for decades to impose humanitarian order amid armed conflict.

But across the global spectrum, especially in the lawless and nonstate insurgencies of recent years, combatants have ignored the prohibition against bombing hospitals and justified their attacks — if they acknowledged them at all — as strikes against enemies firing from within the protected venues.

Hospitals have been bombed and patients and medical personnel killed and wounded in virtually every conflict to shatter the post-World War II peace: Sarajevo, Gaza, Chechnya, Burundi and, last weekend, Kunduz, Afghanistan.

The Kunduz airstrike Saturday by American forces killed 22 people at the Doctors Without Borders hospital in the northern Afghan city. The medical charity's general director, Christopher Stokes, accused U.S. military officials of committing "a war crime." The U.S. military said Monday that Afghan forces, not U.S. advisors, had initiated a request for an airstrike.

In fact, complaints of illegal action lodged by international relief agencies and human rights groups have seldom resulted in prosecution of those accused of ignoring the international community's agreement to respect the treatment of the sick and wounded. - Read More at latimes

War crimes prosecutions are rare in cases of hospital bombings

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