Dozens killed in hospital attack in Sudan’s besieged El Fasher, says WHO
Dozens killed in hospital attack in Sudan’s besieged El Fasher, says WHO
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About 70 people, including patients, believed to have been killed in attack blamed on rebel Rapid Support Forces. About 70 people have been killed in an attack on the only functional hospital in the besieged city of El Fasher in Sudan, the head of the World Health Organization said on Sunday, the latest in a series of attacks as the African nation’s civil war has escalated in recent days.
The attack on the Saudi Teaching Maternal hospital was blamed by local officials on the rebel Rapid Support Forces, a group that has recently faced apparent battlefield losses to the Sudanese military and allied forces under the command of army chief Gen Abdel-Fattah Burhan.
Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry denounced the attack as “a violation of international law”. International mediation attempts and pressure tactics, including a US assessment that the RSF and its proxies are committing genocide, and sanctions targeting Burhan, have not halted the fighting.
“The appalling attack on Saudi hospital in El Fasher, Sudan, led to 19 injuries and 70 deaths among patients and companions,” the WHO director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, wrote on X. “At the time of the attack, the hospital was packed with patients receiving care.”.
Another health facility in Al Malha also was attacked on Saturday, he added. “We continue to call for a cessation of all attacks on health care in Sudan, and to allow full access for the swift restoration of the facilities that have been damaged,” he wrote. “Above all, Sudan’s people need peace. The best medicine is peace.”.
