Pontius, Doctors without borders stated "Our staff reported no armed combatants or fighting in the compound prior to the airstrike". Without any information to the contrary, I do believe this is credible, as they regularly and loudly protest when armed combatants enter the hospital.
( In a statement posted online in July, they said
"heavily armed men from Afghan Special Forces entered the [Médecins Sans Frontières] hospital compound, cordoned off the facility and began shooting in the air."
"The armed men physically assaulted three MSF staff members and entered the hospital with weapons," the statement continued. "They then proceeded to arrest three patients." )
Afghan forces don't like that medical treatment is given to insurgent combatants. This may be a wild conspiracy theory, but maybe some Afghans wanted to use the US to destroy the hospital? Again, pure speculation. Anyway the US has accepted full responsibility, and stated the decision was taken within their chain of command. President Obama called Doctors without borders to apologize (
https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press...onal-president ) - it's exceptionally rare that a US president offers apologies, so I think it's clear this was indeed a major blunder, and everyone is aware of that.
What I don't like is the leaks that RoE weren't followed, it looks like a hunt for a scapegoat. Given that the building looks recognizable, and that publicly available maps identify it as a hospital, and that Doctors without borders provide coordinates, and that AH-130 have capable sensors to visually acquire a target with great precision, and in 99.999% of all cases do exactly that (doctors without borders stated that surrounding buildings were more or less unharmed), this seems odd. I'd suspect there was a communication breakdown somewhere. In the absence of more information, my best guess is that someone - probably by oversight - didn't give the crew and JTAC enough information.