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The death toll from a strike on a hospital in East Darfur has risen to 70, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Tuesday, condemning the attack as a blow to healthcare in Sudan’s ongoing conflict.
The UN health agency said the number of people injured in Friday’s strike on El-Daein Teaching Hospital in the state capital had increased from 89 to 146. The facility has been rendered nonfunctional following the attack.
Hala Khudari, deputy WHO representative in Sudan and the agency’s health emergency lead in the country, called the incident an “atrocious attack.”
According to Khudari, those killed included seven women, 13 children, a doctor and two nurses. Among the injured were patients, their relatives and eight health workers.
“The hospital sustained severe damage, particularly to the outpatient and emergency departments,” Khudari said during a press briefing in Geneva, speaking from Port Sudan.
She noted that the facility had previously been damaged in an attack in August 2024.
“Since this latest attack, the hospital is no longer functional.”
The hospital served as a referral centre for more than two million people in El-Daein and nine surrounding localities in East Darfur. With the facility now out of service, patients may need to travel about 160 kilometres to reach the next referral hospital.
Khudari said attacks on medical facilities severely limit access to healthcare during crises.
“An attack on a hospital is not only an attack on a building. It is an attack on people seeking care, on health workers risking their lives to save others, and on the very possibility of survival in times of crisis,” she said.
“Access to care is shrinking. And efforts to repair or restore damaged facilities and equipment are being undermined.”
She added that the WHO’s health response plan for Sudan in 2026 is currently only 5.7 percent funded.
Sudan has been engulfed in conflict since April 2023, when fighting broke out between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The war has killed tens of thousands and displaced about 11 million people.
Sudanese rights group Emergency Lawyers said the hospital was hit by an army drone strike.
The RSF controls much of the Darfur region in western Sudan, while the national army holds territory in the east, centre and north.
El-Daein, which is under RSF control, has been repeatedly targeted by army attacks as government forces attempt to push the paramilitaries back toward their strongholds in Darfur.
