A drone attack on the main hospital in el-Fasher, a besieged town in western Sudan, has killed 70 people and wounded 19 others, the World Health Organization (WHO) chief said on Sunday.
“As the only functional hospital in el-Fasher, the Saudi Teaching Maternal Hospital provides services which include gyn-obstetrics, internal medicine, surgery and paediatrics, along with a nutrition stabilisation centre,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus posted on X after the Friday strike.
“At the time of the attack, the hospital was packed with patients receiving care,” he added.
While the WHO chief did not specify who was responsible for the attack, local officials have attributed it to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary. Darfur Governor Mini Minnawi said on X that an RSF drone had struck the emergency department of the hospital in the capital of North Darfur, killing patients – including women and children.
Earlier this week, the RSF launched an assault on el-Fasher following the expiration of an ultimatum it had issued to the Sudanese army and its allied forces to withdraw from the North Darfur capital by Thursday.
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The RSF, which has been at war with the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) since April 2023, has surrounded el-Fasher since May, prompting widespread fears that it will kill civilians based on their ethnicity, as it has done in other parts of Darfur.
The ongoing war has claimed tens of thousands of lives, displaced millions from their homes and pushed half of the population into hunger.
Local sources told Middle East Eye on Thursday that the paramilitary group has launched its “final assault” on the city.
An activist in el-Fasher said the RSF bombarded an emergency hospital with artillery fire before the ultimatum expired.
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“All the hospitals in el-Fasher have been attacked by drones and artillery shelling, and they are out of service,” said the activist, who did not want to be named for security reasons.
In a rare statement addressing the targeting of health facilities in Sudan, Saudi Arabia on Sunday condemned the attack on the hospital as a “violation of international law and international humanitarian law”.
It called for the “protection of medical and humanitarian workers”, urging “self-restraint” and avoidance of “targeting civilians”.
The RSF has also targeted the Abu Shouk camp for internally displaced persons, located on the northern outskirts of el-Fasher, as well as neighbourhoods within the city. These attacks have been met with resistance from the army and its allied forces.
