The main hospital in El-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur State, has been attacked and put out of service, Doctors Without Borders (MSF), which supports the health facility, told Reuters on Sunday, while pro-democracy activists blamed the attack on the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
The city is home to more than 1.8 million residents and displaced people, and is the latest front in a war between the Sudanese army and the RSF which began in April 2023.
From May 10 to June 6, some 1,315 wounded arrived at the facility and 208 people have died there, but many people are not able to reach the hospital due to the fighting, MSF said.
Michel-Olivier Lacharite, head of MSF emergency operations, told Reuters that the hospital had previously started evacuating patients after being impacted by fighting three times since May 25.
The El-Fasher Emergency Response Room, a volunteer group, said on Sunday that RSF soldiers raided the hospital on Saturday, killing and injuring several people and looting medicine and an ambulance and forcing the hospital to close.
A separate attack on Saturday on the Abu Shouk camp to the north of the city impacted another medical center, injured more than 30, and killed at least two, the camp committee and a volunteer said.
Local residents have blamed the RSF for the attacks.
Separately, Minni Arko Minawi, the governor of the Darfur region, held a press conference in Port Sudan on Saturday and said that the RSF is actively seeking to capture El Fasher, allegedly under a clandestine deal with an undisclosed foreign country.
Minawi revealed El Fasher city had been burned as a result of the intense artillery shelling by the RSF fighters, saying soldiers of the Rapid Support Forces infiltrated the Southern Hospital and opened fire on the facility, assaulting the medical director and wounding a number of patients.
“Had it not been for the vigilance of the joint forces, the police, and the mobilized personnel, undesirable consequences would have happened,” he concluded.
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