Attacks on health facilities are widespread in besieged el-Fasher, where army-linked militias are pushing back RSF fighters.
Dozens of patients were killed in a drone attack on one of the last functioning hospitals in el-Fasher in Sudan’s Darfur region.
While it was not immediately clear who targeted the Saudi hospital on Friday, medical sources quoted by the AFP news agency said the same building had been hit by a Rapid Support Force (RSF) drone “a few weeks ago”.
At least 30 patients in the emergency department were killed in Friday’s attack, the report added. Regional governor Mini Minawi posted graphic images of bloodied bodies on his X account on Saturday, saying the attack had “exterminated” more than 70 patients, including women and children.
The Sudanese army has been at war with the paramilitary RSF, which has seized almost all of the vast western region of Darfur, since April 2023.
The RSF has been besieging el-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, since May, but armed groups linked to the army have repeatedly pushed back their fighters, preventing them from taking the city.
Attacks on health facilities were widespread in el-Fasher, where the medical charity Doctors Without Borders said this month that the Saudi hospital was “the only public hospital with surgical capacity still in existence”.
Across the country, according to official data, up to 80 percent of health care facilities must be closed.
The war that broke out after disputes over the integration of the two powers killed tens of thousands of people, drove millions from their homes and plunged half the population into starvation.
In the area around al-Fasher, famine has already taken hold in three camps for displaced people – Zamzam, Abu Shouk and Al-Salam – and is expected to spread to five more areas, including the city itself, by May, according to a UN-backed assessment.
The attack on the el-Fasher hospital came as the Sudanese army claimed to have broken the RSF’s siege of its headquarters in Khartoum, which has been in place since the war broke out.
In a statement, the army said troops in Bahri [Khartoum North] and Omdurman “joined our forces stationed at the armed forces headquarters.”
The capital of Sudan, Khartoum, consists of three major cities – Khartoum, Omdurman and Bahri – separated by the Nile River and collectively known as the Triangular Capital.
The army added that it had “kicked out” the RSF from strategically important areas al-Jili an oil refinery north of the capital, the largest in the country.
RSF said in a statement that it rejected the Sudanese army’s claims as “propaganda” designed to boost morale and accused it of spreading falsehoods through fake videos.
