Kathmandu. More than 460 civilians have been killed in a massacre at a Saudi maternity hospital in the western Sudan city of Al Fashar, one of the deadliest incidents of Sudan’s civil war.
The World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed the incident and said that the patients and their relatives were killed in the attack. The heinous crime comes after the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) captured the last major city in Darfur, which was previously under government control.
Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced by the widespread violence since the RSF took control of the city. The hospital was the last partially operated health facility in Al Fasher. It was sheltering starvation and wounded civilians. After the massacre, 6 health workers, including doctors, nurses and pharmacists, were kidnapped by RSF militants.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus strongly condemned the incident as one of the worst atrocities of Sudan’s civil war.
There have been reports of ethnic killings and house-to-house operations since the RSF captured al-Fasher. It is reminiscent of the genocidal campaign of the Darfur war two decades ago.
Tens of thousands of people have fled the city. There is a crisis of food, water and health care.
The United Nations has called Sudan one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. More than 30 million people are in urgent need of assistance and 15 million children are affected.
Since the war began in April 2023, the WHO has confirmed 285 attacks on health facilities in Sudan. More than 1,200 health workers and patients have died. This horrific massacre has exposed a systematic pattern targeting the health service itself.
The United Nations, the European Union (EU) and Western countries have widely condemned the atrocities. The EU’s foreign policy chief called the RSF’s actions “brutal and ethnically targeted”.
Sudan has filed a lawsuit against the UAE at the International Court of Justice (ICG), accusing it of providing military and financial support to the RSF. The UAE has denied the allegations.
