The head of the World Health Organization said on Sunday that the African country’s civil war had escalated after an attack on Sudan’s only functioning hospital in the besieged city of al-Fisher killed around 70 people. People have died. In recent times
Local officials blamed the attack on the Saudi teaching maternity hospital on the rebel Rapid Support Forces, a group recently launched by army chief General Abdul Fattah. The Sudanese army under the leadership of Burhan and its affiliates have suffered losses on the battlefield.
Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry condemned the attack as a “violation of international law”.
International mediation efforts and pressure tactics, including US assessments that RSF and its proxies are committing genocide There are, and sanctions targeting Burhan haven’t stopped the fight either.
“At the time of the attack, the hospital, the hospital, the hospital, the hospital,” wrote WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on X. , leading to 19 injuries and 70 deaths among patients and colleagues. “It was full of patients receiving care.
Another health facility in Al Mulla was also attacked on Saturday, he added.
“We continue to call for an end to all attacks on health care in Sudan, and to allow full access for the rapid rehabilitation of damaged facilities,” he wrote. “Above all, the people of Sudan need peace. The best medicine is peace.
Ghebreyesus did not identify who carried out the attack, although local officials blamed the attack. Clementine Nicota Salami, a UN official coordinating humanitarian efforts in Sudan, warned on Thursday that the RSF had given forces affiliated with the Sudanese armed forces a 48-hour ultimatum to evacuate the city and What is the ominous signal to come”.
“Since May 2024, El Fisher has been under siege by the RSF,” he said. “Civilians in al-Fishar have endured months of suffering, violence and gross human rights abuses under a prolonged siege. Their lives are now hanging in the balance due to heightened uncertainty.”
The RSF did not immediately acknowledge the attack in El Fishar, which is more than 800 kilometers (500 miles) southwest of Khartoum. The city is now estimated to be home to over one million people, many of whom have been displaced by the war.
The United Nations said in December that the RSF siege had killed 782 civilians and injured more than 1,140 others.
The Saudi hospital, which is just north of the airport in El-Fisher, is close to the battle fronts and has been hit by repeated shelling. Its doctors continue to perform surgeries, sometimes by mobile phone light when the hospital is targeted.
However, in recent days the RSF has been tipped to lose control of the Khartoum refinery, Sudan’s largest and vital to its economy and South Sudan. Burhan’s forces also say they broke the RSF’s siege of the Signal Corps headquarters in northern Khartoum. The rebels claimed they were “tightening the nose” around the base.
Sudan has been unstable since a popular uprising forced the ouster of longtime dictator Omar al-Bashir in 2019. A brief transition to democracy was derailed when the RSF’s Burhan and General Mohammad Hamdan Dagalo led a military coup in October. 2021.
Al-Bashir is on trial at the International Criminal Court for allegedly leading a campaign of genocide in the West Darfur region in the early 2000s. faced, which was with Janjavid, the forerunner of the RSF. Rights groups and the United Nations say the RSF and affiliated Arab militias are once again attacking ethnic African groups in the war. are
The RSF and the Sudanese army started fighting each other in April 2023. Their conflict has killed more than 28,000 people, forced hundreds of thousands to flee their homes and left some families desperately trying to survive on grass as famine ravaged parts of the country. is
Other estimates suggest that the death toll in the civil war is much higher.
