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'Patients Burned In Their Beds' After Bombs Hit

A nurse who was working in the Medecins Sans Frontieres hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, when it became the target of a suspected US military airstrike has spoken of the "terrifying" ordeal.

Lajos Zoltan Jecs was sleeping in the hospital's "safe room" when the building was struck by a series of bombs in the early hours of Saturday morning.

"At around 2am I was woken up by the sound of a big explosion nearby. At first I didn't know what was going on. Over the past week we'd heard bombings and explosions before, but always further away. This one was different - close and loud," he said.

"At first there was confusion, and dust settling. As we were trying to work out what was happening, there was more bombing.

"After 20 or 30 minutes, I heard someone calling my name. It was one of the Emergency Room nurses. He staggered in with massive trauma to his arm. He was covered in blood, with wounds all over his body.

"At that point my brain just couldn't understand what was happening. For a second I was just stood still, shocked.

"He was calling for help. In the safe room, we have a limited supply of basic medical essentials, but there was no morphine to stop his pain. We did what we could."

Mr Jecs said after the bombing stopped about 30 minutes later he went with a colleague to look for survivors.

"What we saw was the hospital destroyed, burning. I don’t know what I felt - just shock again.

"We went to look for survivors. A few had already made it to one of the safe rooms. One by one, people started appearing, wounded, including some of our colleagues and caretakers of patients.

"We tried to take a look into one of the burning buildings. I cannot describe what was inside. There are no words for how terrible it was. In the Intensive Care Unit six patients were burning in their beds.

"We looked for some staff that were supposed to be in the operating theatre. It was awful. A patient there on the operating table, dead, in the middle of the destruction. We couldn't find our staff. Thankfully we later found that they had run out from the operating theatre and had found a safe place."

Three children were among the dead, and 37 people were seriously wounded. The 12 medics killed all worked for MSF, also known as Doctors Without Borders.

President Barack Obama has offered his condolences, saying in a statement: "On behalf of the American people, I extend my deepest condolences to the medical professionals and other civilians killed and injured in the tragic incident at a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz.

"The Department of Defense has launched a full investigation, and we will await the results of that inquiry before making a definitive judgement as to the circumstances of this tragedy.

"I have asked the Department of Defense to keep me apprised of the investigation and expect a full accounting of the facts and circumstances."

MSF says its staff frantically phoned NATO and Washington as bombs rained down on its staff working at the trauma centre in Kunduz.

The US military later admitted it carried out strikes "in the vicinity" of the hospital, and was targeting Taliban fighters firing at American soldiers.

It said they "may have resulted in collateral damage to a nearby medical facility" but details were still not clear.

The first bomb landed at 2.10am - and nine minutes later, MSF staff rang NATO's offices in Kabul and military officials in Washington. Despite this, the bombing continued until 3.13am.

Afghanistan's Interior Ministry said there were "10 to 15 terrorists" hiding in the building, which is why it was targeted.

NATO said a US investigation into the tragedy was under way in co-ordination with the Afghan government.

Kunduz, the northern provincial capital, has been the scene of fierce battles since it was overrun by the Taliban last Monday.