In the besieged Sudanese city of El-Fasher, doctors at one of the few remaining hospitals report that an assault has forced them to shut.
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), a medical organization, has provided help to the hospital, describing it as the sole remaining facility in el-Fasher where wounded civilians may get care. There have been rumors of shell strikes injuring and killing people at the city's South Hospital for a few days.
Witnesses report that fighters from the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have already made their way into the complex, however. They approached the hospital on Saturday and started shooting, robbing it of medications and medical supplies, taking an ambulance, and attacking the personnel.
"Our team was unable to verify if there were any dead or wounded due to the chaos," Maximilien Kowalski, the temporary chief of mission in Sudan for the medical organization, told BBC Newsday.
Days previously, hospital doctors had informed the BBC that they intended to move the facility due to security concerns. In ten days, it had been struck three times by bullets and mortar rounds. Thankfully, there were only 10 patients and a smaller medical staff present at the institution on Saturday when it was assaulted, according to MSF. The head of the medical organization in Sudan told the BBC that since the hospital is so near to the war lines, it will stay closed for the time being. According to Mr. Kowalski, wounded people will be left without a place to stay for at least a week as MSF is forced to relocate its el-Fasher operations to the neighboring crumbling Saudi Hospital due to a lack of fuel, power, and water supplies.
The incident on Saturday is another evidence that the Sudanese civil war is devoid of norms.
According to Michel Lacharite, Head of Emergencies at MSF, "opening fire inside a hospital crosses a line." He declares that "the responsibility lies with warring parties to spare medical facilities" and labels the assault as "outrageous". Allegations of extensive abuse have also been made against the Sudanese national army, which has been engaged in combat with the RSF for the last year.
However, in this instance, the RSF forced the closure of a hospital that provided care to civilians. Since the hospital served as the primary referral center for the treatment of war injured, the closure of its operations is a huge blow to the residents of El-Fasher.
More than 1,300 wounded persons sought treatment there in the last month alone, according to the MSF, which describes it as "the only one equipped to manage mass casualties and one of two hospitals with surgical capacity."
Throughout the whole Darfur area, El-Fasher is the only city that is still governed by the army.
Officials from the United Arab Emirates dispute reports that their paramilitary RSF group in Sudan is receiving support from the UAE. Since the battle began in April 2023, there have been an estimated 15,000 deaths nationwide, and almost nine million people have been forced to escape their homes—more than in any previous conflict in history. The RSF has been accused of committing many atrocities against residents in Gezira state, which is south of Khartoum, after taking control of the area in December. The RSF disputes these accusations.
In the Gezira state hamlet of Wad al-Nourah, at least 150 people—35 of them children—were slaughtered by alleged RSF soldiers last week. Rights organizations claim that the RSF is waging an ethnic cleansing operation in Darfur that targets darker-skinned Masalit people as well as other non-Arab tribes, using rape as a weapon of war. The conflict started when the two generals in charge of the army and RSF, respectively, fell out, and several rounds of peace negotiations have failed to bring an end to it. According to UN agencies, the violence has caused the worst displacement disaster in history, and as a consequence, millions of people are suffering starvation.
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