Port Sudan – Attacks by Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces on one of the last functioning hospitals in the besieged city of El-Fasher killed 20 people within 24 hours, medical sources said Wednesday.
Those killed included two health workers, their colleagues at El-Fasher Hospital — one of the city’s last functioning health facilities — told AFP on condition of anonymity.
The RSF is mounting its fiercest assault yet on El-Fasher as it seeks to seize the city from their rivals, the regular army.
Since the war erupted between the two sides in April 2023, tens of thousands have been killed, millions displaced and nearly 25 million pushed into acute hunger.
Activists say El-Fasher, the last state capital in the vast western region of Darfur to elude the paramilitary’s grasp, has become “an open-air morgue” for starved civilians.
The strikes on Tuesday and Wednesday caused “significant damage to hospital buildings” and wounded a combined 24 people.
On Tuesday, a drone strike hit the maternity ward, killing eight people.
RSF shelled Al Fashir Specialist Hospital (Al Saudi) on Tuesday evening, Oct 7, killing 12 and injuring 16+, mostly women and children. A doctor and nurse were among the victims. The attack caused major damage to the hospital.#KeepEyesOnSudan pic.twitter.com/ru4JpgwGxv
— Mohamed Zakarea (@Mohammed_Zakare) October 8, 2025
The artillery attack on Wednesday killed 12 more.
Most hospitals in El-Fasher have been repeatedly bombed and forced to shut, leaving nearly 80 percent of the city in need of medical care but unable to access it, according to the United Nations.
Across the country, hospitals have been routinely attacked, stormed by fighters and looted, with the doctors’ union saying 90 percent of hospitals have at some point been forced shut.
Dozens of health workers have been reported killed, including in what the UN says have been targeted attacks.
In El-Fasher, exhausted medical teams are already scrambling to treat the injured from daily attacks.
Doctors, using satellite internet connections to circumvent a communications blackout, say they have taken to using bits of mosquito netting as a substitute for gauze.
Nearly 18 months into the RSF’s siege, the city – home to 400,000 trapped civilians — has run out of nearly everything.
The animal feed families have survived on for months has grown scarce and now costs hundreds of dollars a sack.
The majority of the city’s soup kitchens have been forced shut for lack of food, according to local resistance committees, volunteer groups coordinating aid.
One million have fled
According to UN figures released Tuesday, more than one million people have fled El-Fasher since the war began, accounting for 10 percent of all internally displaced people in the country.
The population of the city, once the region’s largest, has decreased by about 62 percent, the UN’s migration agency said.
Civilians say the daily strikes force them to spend most of their time underground, in small makeshift bunkers families have dug into their backyards.
Satellite images show the RSF has built dozens of kilometres of walls around the city, leaving only a small exit where they are reportedly extorting civilians for safe passage.
The UN has repeatedly warned of “large-scale, ethnically driven attacks and atrocities” in the city, where the RSF has overrun multiple famine-hit displacement camps, killing hundreds.
“After over 500 days of unremitting siege by the RSF and incessant fighting, El-Fasher is on the precipice of an even greater catastrophe if urgent measures are not taken (to) loosen the armed vice upon the city and to protect civilians,” UN rights chief Volker Turk said Thursday.
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Source: AFP
