Paris, Oct 3 (EFE).– The Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) organization raised the death toll from the bombing of its hospital Saturday in the northern Afghan city of Kunduz to 12 of its staff and seven patients, the consequences of what is said to have been a U.S. airstrike.

According to MSF records, still provisional and reported on Twitter, 12 of the dead were staff members of the medical charity and seven were patients, three of them children.

Another 37 people were seriously wounded, most of whom were taken to the Puli Khumri Medical Center some 2 hours by road from Kunduz.

Nineteen of the wounded are MSF staff members, of whom five are in critical condition, while 16 are patients who were being treated at the hospital.

MSF considers the bombing of its hospital “a grave violation of international humanitarian law” and demanded “total transparency from coalition forces. We cannot accept that this horrific loss of life will simply be dismissed as ‘collateral damage.'”

The Afghan government said the bombing was carried out by the U.S. Air Force after Taliban terrorists were suspected of hiding out in the hospital.

Pictures released after the attack show part of the medical center’s ground floor ablaze, while survivors jammed into areas that had escaped damage.

The bombing took place following the capture of Kunduz last Monday by the Taliban, the insurgents’ biggest victory since they were ousted from power in 2001, and the subsequent recapture of the city by Afghan troops with the support of U.S. airstrikes.

“The bombing in Kunduz continued for more than 30 minutes after American and Afghan military officials in Kabul and Washington were first informed by MSF that its hospital was struck,” the medical charity said in a statement, while making it clear that it had “communicated the precise locations of its facilities to all parties on multiple occasions over the past months.”

Col. Brian Tribus, spokesman for U.S. troops in Afghanistan, did not directly assign responsibility for the attack, saying only that a U.S. bombing in Kunduz “may have caused collateral damage to a nearby health facility.”

However, the Afghan government said through its Health Ministry in no uncertain terms that the MSF hospital was almost totally destroyed by the fire caused by the U.S. bombing.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said, meanwhile, that there were no insurgents in the hospital at the time of the attack. EFE