Photo source: WHO
Patients Slain, Health Workers Abducted
Sudan Hospital Massacre Deepens El Fasher Crisis
El Fasher, Sudan: More than 460 patients and their companions were reportedly killed inside the Saudi Maternity Hospital in El Fasher in what health officials describe as one of the deadliest single assaults on a medical facility since Sudan’s civil conflict erupted in April 2023. Six health workers — four doctors, a nurse and a pharmacist — were abducted during the same attack, which capped a month of repeated strikes on the only partially functioning hospital in North Darfur’s besieged capital.
Witness accounts filtering through humanitarian channels describe a grim scene: wards littered with bodies, oxygen cylinders overturned, and makeshift operating tables reduced to rubble. The incident, which occurred on October 28, 2025, followed three previous assaults on the facility this month, including one on October 26, that killed a nurse and injured three others. The World Health Organization (WHO), confirming the reports through local partners today, called the killings “a violation of international humanitarian law,” and urged an immediate cessation of hostilities and protection for civilians and medical personnel.
The massacre unfolded against the backdrop of intensifying street battles between rival armed groups in El Fasher, where an estimated 260,000 civilians remain trapped without access to food, clean water, or health care. The city has been cut off from humanitarian assistance since February, and according to United Nations field reports, conditions inside have deteriorated sharply. More than 28,000 residents have fled in recent days — 26,000 towards the rural fringes of El Fasher and about 2,000 to Tawila, some 60 kilometres southwest. Aid agencies fear that up to 100,000 more could be displaced in the coming weeks, joining the 575,000 already sheltering across Darfur.
Since the conflict’s outbreak, at least 46 health workers have been killed in El Fasher alone, among them the Director of Primary Health Care in the State Ministry of Health, and another 48 have been injured. The fate of staff belonging to three nongovernmental organisations operating in the city remains unknown. According to WHO data verified since April 2023, there have been 185 attacks on health facilities nationwide, resulting in 1,204 deaths and 416 injuries to patients and health personnel — 49 of those incidents occurring this year.
Beyond the immediate violence, disease and hunger are spreading. Cholera has resurged amid the breakdown of sanitation and safe water systems. El Fasher has recorded 272 suspected cholera cases this year, with 32 deaths — a case fatality rate approaching 12 per cent. Across Darfur’s 40 localities, 18,468 cases and 662 deaths have been reported. Malnutrition, particularly among children and pregnant women, is compounding the crisis, weakening immunity and amplifying vulnerability to infectious diseases, including malaria and diarrhoeal infections. Aid agencies report that many families have exhausted food stocks or lost access to markets as frontlines shifted.
The Saudi Maternity Hospital, now largely in ruins, had served as the city’s last functioning referral centre for obstetric emergencies, delivering hundreds of babies a month before the siege began. Its destruction has effectively severed access to lifesaving care for women and newborns in North Darfur. Satellite imagery analysed by humanitarian monitors shows smoke damage to several adjoining wards, suggesting the use of heavy munitions in a densely populated area. International humanitarian law explicitly prohibits attacks on medical facilities and personnel.
Despite restricted access, emergency health teams supported by WHO continue to operate from nearby Tawila and Korma. According to WHO field updates, twenty metric tons of medicines, emergency kits, and cholera supplies are being moved from Nyala to Tawila, where displaced families are arriving daily. Supplies handed to partner agencies in Abeche, eastern Chad, are being expedited for delivery to Darfur’s western corridors. WHO trucks are also positioned to join a United Nations convoy carrying food and medicines into El Fasher as soon as security conditions allow.
The wider health infrastructure across Sudan is near collapse. WHO estimates that more than two-thirds of major hospitals in conflict-affected areas are now non-functional due to damage, staff shortages, or lack of electricity and water. Those still operating face the threat of closure as fighting intensifies. Disease surveillance systems have been disrupted, severely limiting the ability to detect or contain outbreaks. The country’s health emergency now affects 11 million people in need of urgent medical care.
The conflict has driven millions from their homes. Neighbouring countries — Chad, Egypt, South Sudan, Ethiopia and the Central African Republic — are hosting an influx of Sudanese refugees, many in precarious health. Humanitarian agencies are working with local authorities to bolster medical services in border areas, but insecurity, road blockades and funding shortfalls continue to impede deliveries of aid.
In Geneva, WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus described the El Fasher killings as “appalling and deeply shocking,” and reiterated that all patients, health workers, and facilities must be protected under the Geneva Conventions. “All attacks on health care must stop immediately and unconditionally,” he said.
The conflict in Sudan, now entering its nineteenth month, has fractured the country’s governance and devastated civilian life. Once a regional trade hub, El Fasher has become emblematic of the broader crisis — a city where medical ethics, humanitarian law, and human survival have converged in tragedy. For the survivors, the siege has left not only a physical void but the collapse of an institution that once symbolised hope in war: a hospital that healed the vulnerable, now itself a casualty of the conflict.
As aid convoys wait for a corridor to open and communications remain patchy, the full extent of casualties from the attack is still being verified. But for the tens of thousands still trapped in El Fasher, the events of 28 October mark a brutal new chapter in a war that has already consumed Sudan’s fragile health system — and turned its hospitals into battlegrounds.
