A strike on a hospital in Sudan killed 64 people and wounded 89, the WHO said on Saturday, with 13 children counted among the dead.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the attack on Friday hit El-Daein Teaching Hospital in East Darfur, adding that “enough blood has been spilled” and it was time to stop the nearly three-year conflict ravaging Sudan.
The hospital “was struck, killing at least 64 people, including 13 children, two female nurses, one male doctor and multiple patients,” he wrote on X.
The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has blamed the military for the strike on the hospital and Sudanese rights group Emergency Lawyers reported that the hospital was hit by an army drone strike.
The army has denied the attack, but two military officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the strike was targeting a nearby police station.
The Sudanese Armed Forces said it “adheres to international norms and laws,” and that “attacking service and health facilities is a persistent practice and a daily activity of this terrorist militia,” referring to the RSF.
Eight health staff were among the wounded in the attack, which damaged the hospital’s pediatric, maternity and emergency departments, Tedros said.
The hospital is now nonfunctional “due to the extensive damage,” which resulted in a “critical interruption of essential medical services,” he said.
The WHO was supporting local health partners to help fill urgent gaps by scaling up capacity at other health facilities, including by increasing capacity to treat the injured, and deploying trauma care supplies and essential medicines, Tedros said.
RSF-controlled El-Daein has been regularly attacked by the Sudanese army, which is trying to push the paramilitaries back toward its Darfur strongholds and away from Sudan’s central corridor.
Its most recent strike on the city’s market earlier this month set fire to oil barrels that burned for hours.
The WHO’s Surveillance System for Attacks on Health Care (SSA) counts and verifies such attacks, but it does not attribute blame, as it is not an investigative agency.
The UN’s humanitarian office in Sudan said it was “appalled by the attack.”
To the repeated condemnation of the UN, hospitals have been a regular target throughout the war, which erupted in April 2023.
As a result of Friday’s tragedy, the total number of people killed in attacks on health are in the conflict has now passed 2,000.
The WHO’s SSA site showed 2,036 people have now been killed in 213 such attacks.
“Beyond the devastating human toll, attacks on healthcare have immediate and long-term consequences for communities already in desperate need of both emergency and routine medical services,” Tedros said. “Healthcare should never be a target. Peace is the best medicine.”
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