Deadly drone attack targeting hospital in Darfur, Sudan. conflict news
There are large-scale attacks on health facilities in besieged al-Fashar, where army-aligned militias are pushing back RSF fighters.
Dozens of patients have been killed in a drone strike on one of the last functioning hospitals in Al-Fashar in Sudan’s Darfur region.
Although it was not immediately clear who targeted the Saudi hospital on Friday, the AFP news agency quoted medical sources as saying that the same building was attacked by Rapid Support Forces (RSF) drones “a few weeks ago”.
At least 30 emergency department patients died in Friday’s attack, reports said. Regional governor Mini Minawi posted graphic photos of bloodied bodies on her X account on Saturday, saying that more than 70 patients, including women and children, were “eliminated” in the attack.
The Sudanese army has been at war with the paramilitary RSF, which has captured almost the entire vast western region of Darfur, since April 2023.
The RSF has besieged al-Fashar, the capital of North Darfur state, since May, but militia-aligned armed groups have repeatedly pushed their fighters back, preventing them from claiming the city.
Attacks on health facilities have been widespread in al-Fashar, where the medical charity Doctors Without Borders said this month that the Saudi hospital was “the only public hospital with surgical capacity still standing”.
According to official data, up to 80 percent of health care facilities across the country have been put out of service.
The war, which erupted following disputes over the unification of the two armies, has killed thousands of people, driven millions from their homes and driven half the population into starvation.
In the area around al-Fashar, famine has already taken hold in three displacement camps – Zamzam, Abu Shouk and al-Salam – and is expected to spread to five more areas, including the city, by May, according to UN-backed assessments. hopefully. ,
The attack on the hospital in al-Fashar came after the Sudanese army claimed to have broken the RSF siege of its headquarters in Khartoum since the beginning of the war.
In a statement, the army said the troops in Bahri (Khartoum North) and Omdurman “have merged into our forces deployed in the General Command of the Armed Forces”.
The capital of Sudan, Khartoum consists of three main cities – Khartoum, Omdurman and Bahri – which are separated by the Nile River and are collectively known as the Tri-Capital.
The army said it had “expelled” the RSF from the country’s largest strategically important al-Jili oil refinery, north of the capital.
RSF said in a statement that it rejected the Sudanese army’s claims as “propaganda” designed to boost morale and accused it of spreading lies through doctored videos.
