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The United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urgently called for an immediate end to military hostilities in Sudan on Thursday, following alarming reports that paramilitary forces shot dead over 460 patients and companions at a maternity hospital in El-Fasher.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) condemned the atrocities at the Saudi Maternity Hospital—the city’s last partially functional medical facility—reporting it was attacked on Sunday for the fourth time this month, resulting in one nurse killed and three health workers injured.
Just two days later, the WHO stated that six health workers were abducted and more than 460 people were reportedly executed inside the hospital grounds.
The violence coincides with the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by Mohammad Hamdan Daglo, recently seizing El-Fasher, the final army stronghold in the vast Darfur region.
This victory follows an 18-month siege and has intensified fears of widespread ethnic cleansing, echoing the atrocities committed by the RSF’s predecessor, the Janjaweed militias, two decades ago.
Independent analysis supports these fears.
Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab, using satellite imagery, reported evidence of “mass killing events” and ongoing “systematic killing” targeting non-Arab communities, particularly around the Saudi Hospital and an RSF detention site.
The continued fighting, which began in April 2023, has essentially led to the de facto partition of Sudan, with the RSF dominating the west and the regular army controlling the east and north.
International truce talks remain stalled, with Guterres calling for an “immediate end to the siege and hostilities” amid the world’s largest displacement and hunger crisis, which has already forced over 33,000 people to flee El-Fasher since Sunday.
