UN: Attack on hospital in Al Fashir a shocking violation and affront to humanity
28 January, 2025
Port Sudan, (Sudanow)-The United Nations has described a rebel drone attack on a hospital in Darfur region that left dozens of patients dead and injured as “shocking violation and affront to humanity”
In statement it issued on Sunday, January 26, 2025, the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Sudan, Clementine Nkweta-Salami, said she was “appalled “by rebel Rapid Support Force (RSF) attack against the Saudi Teaching Maternal Hospital in Al Fashir, North Darfur State, on 24 January, which claimed the lives of at least 70 patients receiving critical care and their relatives, and wounded dozens.
The UN official sent her condolences to all the affected families and expressed the solidarity of the humanitarian community in Sudan with them and all the people affected by the ongoing conflict.
She added that the attack in which the militias used strategic drones to bombard the hospital, the only functional hospital in Al Fashir, was a shocking violation of international humanitarian law.
“I condemn it in the strongest terms.” The UN official said.
The statement has described the shelling of the hospital which is in area under the control of the Sudanese army, as an “alarming disregard for human life is unacceptable. Hospitals and medical facilities should never be targeted. These institutions are sanctuaries of life, healing and hope, and their destruction is an affront to our shared humanity.”
The hospital is inside Darfur’ major regional capital under full control of the Sudanese Armed Forces and is being defended by the army and the Darfur Armed Struggle movement, has been repeatedly attacked by the RSF militias and in the over 170 attacks none was able to enter the town. The rebel then resorted to drone attack to randomly attack civilian infrastructures and public service units including hospitals
The rebel attacks on the town and on camps for internally displaced persons intensified after RSF militias sustained defeats in central Sudan and in Khartoum in recent weeks.
“The deliberate targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure needs to cease immediately and those responsible must be held accountable. Civilians are not combatants and must always be protected.
The UN statement came day after the governor of Darfur region, Arko Mini Minawi, and the Ministry of health in the region, announced that the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militias, the party in position of strategic drones in the current war, attacked the hospital leaving more than 70 civilians killed and injured, Saturday.
Among those killed are patients and co-patients who had been waiting inside the emergency section of the Saudi hospital.
The local ministry of health said this was the 14th direct attack against this hospital by the rebel RSF militias against the hospital.
This time the attack targeted the only section that survived previous strikes, said Governor of Darfur Region, Mini Arko Minawe.
“They killed all patients inside the section, more than 70 of them, including women and children,” Minawe said in his account on X platform.
The Sudanese ministry of foreign affairs issued a statement on Saturday describing the drone attack as “massacre at Saudi Hospital committed by the rebel Rapid Support Militia” and that it constituted “a war crime and a crime against humanity”.
The Ministry statement noted that the militia has come to rely mainly on the weapon of strategic drones to commit war crimes and massacres, as demonstrated in its repeated attacks on power and water stations, hospitals and marketplaces.
“The entire international community knows who supplies the militia with these drones and other advanced lethal weapons and transports them to it by air, sea and land. It is time for the institutions of legitimacy and international justice to hold the militia's sponsors accountable, considering them a full partner of the militia in its terrorism and crimes," the ministry said.
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