Doctors Without Borders president recounts attack on Kunduz hospital

The Quebec City-born president of Doctors Without Borders offered up harrowing details of the attack on a hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, saying "patients burned alive in their beds."

In an interview Monday with CBC Montreal's Daybreak, Joanne Liu said the airstrikes left 22 people dead, including 12 of her staff.

"At 2 a.m. last Saturday... there were five airstrikes on the central building of the hospital that is hosting the emergency and the intensive care unit," Liu said.

"All the people who were there and there were up to 180 either they were patients or staff."

Doctors Without Borders, also known by its French name Mdecins Sans Frontires, issued a statement Sunday expressing its "clear assumption that a war crime has been committed," after earlier saying that "all indications'' were that the international coalition was responsible for the early Saturday morning bombing.

The organization has called for a public investigation into the airstrike and the cooperation of U.S. and Afghan authorities.

The U.S. military acknowledged it may have bombed the hospital, saying Saturday in a statement that it was targeting Taliban insurgents who were directly firing on U.S. troops.

Liu said the hospital was used only by staff and patients and protected by a guard.

Her organization treated 22,000 patients from "all parties in the conflict" last year, but she said it would need to withdraw from Kunduz following the attack.

"Until we have some light shed on why this happened under which circumstances, we cannot go back," she said.