Washington, October 12 (RHC)-- The United States will pay compensation to those killed and injured last week by U.S. airstrikes on a hospital in Kunduz in northern Afghanistan, the Pentagon says. On October 3, U.S. fighter jets struck an Afghan hospital run by Doctors Without Borders, or Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), an international medical charity group based in Geneva, Switzerland.

The attack killed 12 medical staff members and at least 10 patients, three of them children, and wounded at least 37 people, according to the medical aid organization. At least 33 people are still missing after the airstrikes.

Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook announced over the weekend that the U.S. military will make "condolence payments" to the injured and the families of 22 people who lost their lives in the attack, but said that the amount of the payments has not been decided yet.

Doctors Without Borders officials have blamed the United States, demanding an independent investigation into the incident and calling it a war crime.

The U.S. military had said that American troops were under Taliban fire and had called in the strike. It termed the hospital as "collateral damage." However, on October 6, the Pentagon acknowledged that the deadly U.S. airstrike was a mistake made within the U.S. military’s chain of command.