By Nafisa Eltahir
(Reuters) -The last functioning hospital in the Sudanese city of al-Fashir was raided and hundreds are feared to have been killed there after a paramilitary force overran the city this week, the World Health Organization and a Sudanese official said.
Reuters could not immediately verify the deaths, as communications inside the city are cut off and doctors from the hospital have been offline since the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces seized the Sudanese army’s last stronghold in the city on Sunday.
It was unclear when exactly the raid, which the Sudanese official as well as doctors and activists blamed on the RSF, took place. The RSF dismissed the reports as disinformation, saying in a statement that all al-Fashir’s hospitals had been abandoned.
More than 36,000 people have fled al-Fashir since Sunday, according to the International Organisation for Migration, but little is known about the fate of the more than 200,000 others thought to have remained there during an 18-month RSF assault and siege of the city.
Rights groups have long feared that an RSF takeover of famine-stricken al-Fashir could trigger mass revenge killings, and escapees from the city have reported summary killings.
Rights groups and U.S. officials have accused the RSF and allied militias of ethnic cleansing in Darfur, documented by Reuters. Al-Fashir was the army’s last significant holdout in the vast, western Darfur region as it battles the army in a war that erupted in April 2023.
ABDUCTIONS, HOSPITALS UNDER ATTACK
Darfur state governor Minni Minawi, a former Darfur rebel leader now aligned with the army against the RSF, said on X on Wednesday that 460 people were killed in the attack on al-Fashir’s Saudi Hospital.
Minawi did not provide details and could not be reached for comment. Two Sudanese doctors’ groups, citing sources on the ground, and an al-Fashir activist network, said they believed hundreds of people in makeshift wards around the hospital were also killed, in addition to those inside. Reuters could not immediately verify their claims.
The WHO said in a statement on Wednesday that four doctors, a nurse, and a pharmacist were abducted from the Saudi hospital. A humanitarian source could not confirm the death toll, but confirmed the kidnappings.
A WHO spokesperson told Reuters it had verified the attack based on multiple eyewitness statements, a government account and photos and videos.
A video shared by Minawi and circulated on social media purported to show the hospital attack, but was geolocated by Reuters to a different location – an Al-Fashir University building which two former residents said had been used as a shelter.
However, satellite imagery of the hospital on October 28 published by the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab showed clusters of white objects surrounded by red stains on the ground it said were consistent with human remains around the hospital.
According to al-Fashir residents, doctors, and humanitarians, the RSF repeatedly attacked hospitals inside al-Fashir during the siege, targeting them with rocket fire, drones, and raids on foot.
During the siege, doctors who remained in al-Fashir had been treating malnutrition, trauma cases, and maternity cases in the Saudi hospital with few if any supplies, after all other hospitals were abandoned due to attacks.
(Reporting by Nafisa Eltahir, Emma Farge, Catherine Cartier, Milan Pavicic, and Khalid Abdelaziz; Editing by Aidan Lewis)
Comments