WHO chief: About 70 killed in attack on hospital in Sudan

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Around 70 people were killed in an attack on the only functional hospital in the besieged city of El Fasher in Sudan, the chief of the World Health Organization said Sunday, part of a series of attacks coming as the African nation’s civil war escalated in recent days.

The attack on the Saudi Teaching Maternal Hospital, which local officials blamed on the rebel Rapid Support Forces, came as the group was experiencing apparent battlefield losses to the Sudanese military and allied forces under the command of army chief Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan. That includes Burhan appearing Saturday near a burning oil refinery north of Khartoum that his forces said they had seized from the Rapid Support Forces.

Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Ministry denounced the attack as “a violation of international law.”

International mediation attempts and pressure tactics, including a U.S. assessment that the Rapid Support Forces and its proxies are committing genocide, and sanctions targeting Burhan haven’t halted the fighting.

‘Packed with patients’

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus posted the death toll in the hospital attack in El Fasher on X.

Officials and others in the capital of North Darfur province had cited a similar figure Saturday, but Tedros is the first international source to provide a casualty number. Reporting on Sudan is incredibly difficult given communication challenges, the indiscriminate violence faced by civilians, and exaggerations by both the Rapid Support Forces and the Sudanese military.

“The appalling attack on Saudi Hospital in El Fasher, Sudan, led to 19 injuries and 70 deaths among patients and companions,” Tedros wrote. “At the time of the attack, the hospital was packed with patients receiving care.”

Another health facility in Al Malha also was attacked Saturday, he added.