ALBAWABA - A Rapid Support Forces (RSF) attack on El Fasher's South Hospital forced the medical facility to fully close on Saturday. The RSF stormed the hospital and engaged in violent clashes with the Sudanese Armed Forces.
The medical facility was considered one of the very few operating hospitals in the North Darfur city of El Fasher. The director general of the health ministry for North Darfur State, Ibrahim Abdullah Khatir, stated that RSF militants "attacked doctors and medical staff, and kidnapped hospital volunteers".
Witnesses attested to the attack and said that medical staff members' phones and other possessions were "looted" by the RSF. Two civilian hospitals, two military hospitals, and 12 health centers are still open in El Fasher, according to Khatir, despite the shutdown of South Hospital, the city's principal facility for mass casualty events.
The fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the RSF, which started in the city on May 10th, is still escalating. There have been 1,300 wounded and 288 civilian deaths as a result of the fighting since then.
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the violence has caused approximately 8.8 million people to be internally displaced and an estimated 15,550 deaths nationwide.
Since the crisis started, the South Hospital has been continuously bombarded, underscoring the terrible effect of the ongoing fighting on healthcare services in the area and making it necessary to respond to situations of mass casualties.
"The RSF attacked from multiple directions and infiltrated the hospital, where many injured people were being treated, as a result of deliberate bombing," stated Darfur Governor Minni Minawi during a press conference in Port Sudan on Saturday.
The city was "burning," he stated, even if the army and its allies had repulsed the invasion. "An attempt at genocide and ethnic cleansing against the residents of El Fasher," according to Minawi, who said that his daily evaluations reveal a larger civilian death toll than military and allied forces personnel.
