Obama Apologizes to Doctors Without Borders for Hospital Bombing

U.S. President Barack Obama apologized this week after the U.S. accidentally struck a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Afghanistan, killing at least 22.

White House spokesperson Josh Earnest said in a statement that the president reportedly called Doctors Without Borders to offer an apology for last weekend's airstrike, which was called in by Afghan forces to hit a hospital in Kunduz.

While Doctors Without Borders says it will approach the incident as a "war crime," Earnest argued that it should not be thought "that this was anything other than a terrible, tragic mistake."

"The president offered up his personal apology," Earnest continued, adding that the president has promised to "provide a transparent, thorough and objective accounting of the facts and circumstances of the incident."

The Doctors Without Borders aid organization previously suggested that the bombing would be investigated as a "war crime," with Vickie Hawkins, executive director of the UK branch for Doctors Without Borders, saying in a statement that "Under the rules of international humanitarian law, a hospital is a hospital and the people inside are patients -- to target a medical facility in this way is a violation of that, whatever the circumstances."

"The statements that have been coming out of the Afghan government in the past 24 hours would lead us to believe that there was some kind of intent behind the attack. We can only presume, on this basis, that that constitutes a war crime," Hawkins added.

Joanne Liu, Doctors Without Borders International president, said in a statement that the organization continues to call on the U.S. to cooperate in an investigation of the incident to find out why it happened.