Rebels Blamed After Hospital Attack in Besieged Sudanese City Kills 70 People

Approximately 70 people were killed in an attack on the only functional hospital in the besieged city of El Fasher in Sudan, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said yesterday, the latest in a series of attacks as the country's civil war escalates.

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The attack on the Saudi teaching maternal hospital was blamed by local officials on the rebel Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a group that has recently faced apparent battlefield losses to Sudan's military and allied forces under the command of the army chief Gen Abdel-Fattah Burhan.

Saudi Arabia's foreign ministry denounced the attack as "a violation of international law".

International mediation attempts and pressure tactics, including a US assessment that the RSF and its proxies are committing genocide, and sanctions targeting Burhan, have not halted the fighting.

"The appalling attack on Saudi hospital in El Fasher, Sudan, led to 19 injuries and 70 deaths among patients and companions," the WHO director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, wrote on X. "At the time of the attack, the hospital was packed with patients receiving care."

A health facility in Al Malha was also attacked on Saturday, he said.