“This was a tragic but avoidable accident caused primarily by human error,” Gen. John Campbell, top United States commander in Afghanistan told reporters on Wednesday.

Campbell, of course, is referring to the charity hospital in Afghanistan — Doctors Without Borders, otherwise referred to as its French acronym MSF — that was the recipient of a fatal airstrike from a U.S. warplane when the military operators mistook it for another building, a Taliban insurgent command and control site, several hundred yards away, according to report published via a special investigation.

The commander also said that the personnel responsible for the errors have been suspended from duty.

The “errors” ended up killing 30 people and wounding many others.

Thankfully, the military also stressed they would never intentionally target a hospital.

This from FOX News:

The report itself, obtained by The Associated Press, said the crew of the U.S. AC-130 gunship relied on a physical description of the compound provided by Afghan forces, which led the crew to attack the wrong target. It said the intended target, thought to be under Taliban control and being used in part as a prison, was 450 yards away from the hospital.

Investigators found no evidence that the crew or the U.S. Special Forces commander on the ground who authorized the Oct. 3 strike knew the targeted compound was a hospital at the time of the attack.

The attack was preceded, according to the report, by Afghan special forces members advising the U.S. Special Forces commander in Kunduz that an Afghan ground assault force would raid a National Directorate of Security compound in Kunduz that night. The NDS is Afghanistan’s national intelligence agency.

The Afghans identified the compound as a Taliban insurgent command and control site, the report said. The AC-130 aircrew, however, for a variety of reasons thought the Afghans were referring to the site that turned out to be the hospital. The coordinates for the target were passed on to the aircrew by an American terminal attack controller, including a reference to the target as also being a prison.

Among the reasons for why the aircrew thought the hospital was the Taliban building were: sloppiness in their procedure, equipment malfunction, missile threat and overall careless assumption.

The attack on the hospital lasted almost a half hour.

The investigation was conducted by U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Richard Kim and composed of NATO reps as well as Afghan government officials.