23.10.2026 12:21
It has emerged that the Rapid Support Forces systematically targeted hospitals throughout the siege in El Fasher, Darfur, Sudan. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said the attacks could amount to war crimes.
According to research conducted by the BBC, during the period when the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Sudan besieged El Fasher in the Darfur region for a long time and captured it last year, it systematically destroyed the city's health system.
In research conducted with sources in the city, at least 43 separate attacks on hospitals and health facilities were documented between May 2024 and October 2025; some facilities were hit more than once. Between April 2023 and October 2025, 55 health workers in the city lost their lives, 120 were injured, and 10 were abducted or went missing.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk described the findings as "extremely disturbing" and said attacks on health facilities could be considered war crimes. The RSF rejected the findings; Dr. Alaa Eldin Nugud, health minister of the administration established by the group, described the allegations as propaganda by the army and its allies and claimed that some hospitals were used for military purposes. The BBC could not find independent evidence confirming this claim.
Surgeon Izzeddin Ahmed Dawoud Asow, chief physician of Southern Hospital, recounted that during the June 2024 raid, RSF militants beat him with rifle butts. Asow said he survived by pretending to be dead, and that the militants placed a hand on his chest, thought he was dead, and left.
According to doctors' accounts, the Saudi Hospital, the last remaining functioning hospital in the city, was hit by artillery fire and drones 25 times on some days. On the day the hospital was hit, the medical team had to perform a Caesarean section by the light of a phone. Because all ambulances were destroyed, patients were transported by donkey carts; one of these was also attacked by a drone.
Medical teams piled sandbags against the attacks and set up underground shelters from steel containers. When the RSF captured the city in October 2025, it also entered the Saudi Hospital; the RSF denies this incident, in which more than 460 patients and companions were allegedly killed.
In the civil war that began between the army and the RSF in April 2023, both sides are accused of attacking health facilities. The World Health Organization stated that what happened in El Fasher is one of the clearest and most severe examples of the war's impact on health services.
Source: BBC