KABUL - Afghanistan's acting defense minister said Monday that the Doctors without Borders hospital bombed by U.S. forces in the northern city of Kunduz was being used by insurgents as a "safe place."

The hospital was bombed by a U.S. AC-130 gunship in the early hours of Oct. 3, killing at least 22 people and wounding many more. The main building was destroyed and the hospital has been shut down.

"That was a place they wanted to use as a safe place because everybody knows that our security forces and international security forces were very careful not to do anything with a hospital," Defense Minister Masoom Stanekzai told The Associated Press, adding that a Taliban flag had been mounted on one of the hospital's walls.

Doctors Without Borders, also known by its French acronym MSF, has repeatedly denied that Taliban fighters were present in the hospital compound at the time of the attack.

"Every staff member in Kunduz working for MSF has repeatedly reported to us that there were no armed people in the hospital at the time of the bombing," Kate Stegeman, MSF's communications director in Afghanistan, said Monday: The group said no staff had reported a Taliban flag on any wall of the compound.

MSF has acknowledged that it treated wounded Taliban fighters at the Kunduz hospital, but it insists no weapons were allowed in. Afghans who worked there have told the AP that no one was firing from within. (Agencies)