Sudanese paramilitary group accused of killing hundreds in North Darfur hospital

Paramilitary forces in Sudan have allegedly killed 460 people at a maternity hospital in the city of el-Fasher, the director general of the World Health Organisation (WHO) has said.

In a statement, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus expressed horror at reports that the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) had slaughtered hundreds at the Saudi Maternity Hospital after capturing the capital of North Darfur province over the weekend.

The WHO was “appalled and deeply shocked” by the development, he said.

The Sudan Doctors Network, a medical group tracking the war, accused RSF fighters of “cold-bloodedly” killing everyone they found inside the hospital on Tuesday, including patients and visitors.

Sudanese residents and aid workers also claimed that the RSF, who have been fighting a civil war against the country’s army since April 2023, have perpetrated mass killings in el-Fasher.

Until last week, the city was the only army stronghold left in the region.

Using a Sudanese term for the RSF, mother-of-four Umm Amena condemned what she had seen before fleeing the city on Monday. “The Janjaweed showed no mercy for anyone,” she said.

Others like Tajal-Rahman, a man in his late 50s, also spoke of the horrors they had witnessed.

“It was like a killing field,” he said from the town of Tawila, around 60 kilometers (37 miles) west of el-Fasher. “Bodies everywhere and people bleeding and no one to help them.”

Giulia Chiopris, a paediatrician at a Doctors Without Borders-run hospital in Tawila, said she and her colleagues had seen many patients since 18 October who had been injured in bombings and shootings.

Malnourished and dehydrated children, many of them unaccompanied, had also been treated at the hospital, she said.

Around 35,000 people have fled el-Fasher, largely for nearby rural areas, since Sunday, according to the UN migration agency.

In a report published late on Tuesday, the Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL) said the RSF was still carrying out mass slaughter, adding that its conclusions were based on evidence from satellite imagery.

HRL also said that “it is highly likely that any estimates of the total number of people who RSF has killed are undercounted”.

Before the violence spiked last week, the UN said that 1,350 people were killed between 1 January and 20 October in el-Fasher, a city that had been besieged by the RSF for more than 500 days.

Senator Jim Risch, chairman of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the RSF should be designated as a foreign terrorist organisation.

“The RSF has waged terror and committed unspeakable atrocities, genocide among them, against the Sudanese people,” he wrote on X.