EL-FASHER, Sudan (AP) — Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) killed more than 600 people, including patients and medical staff, during a brutal assault on a hospital in North Darfur, witnesses and aid agencies said Wednesday, describing one of the deadliest atrocities since the country’s civil war began two years ago.
The World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed that 460 patients and their companions were massacred inside Saudi Hospital in the provincial capital of El-Fasher on Tuesday after RSF fighters overran the city. “The attack was a massacre,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who condemned the violence as a violation of international humanitarian law.
Survivors and aid workers told The Associated Press that RSF gunmen went door-to-door, shooting civilians, including women and children, and executing hospital patients in their beds. Witnesses described corpses scattered in the streets and around the hospital. “It was like a killing field,” said Tajal-Rahman, a man who fled the city. “Bodies everywhere, people bleeding, and no one to help them.”
The assault came after RSF forces seized El-Fasher, the Sudanese army’s last major stronghold in Darfur, following a 500-day siege. The capture raises fears that Sudan, already fractured by ethnic and political divisions, may splinter again more than a decade after South Sudan’s independence.
Humanitarian agencies say the massacre is part of a systematic campaign of terror. The Sudan Doctors Network, which has tracked violence since the conflict began, said RSF fighters “cold-bloodedly killed everyone they found inside the hospital,” showing no mercy to the wounded or medical staff.
Umm Amena, a mother of four who escaped after being detained by RSF fighters, said the attackers “beat and tortured” civilians before shooting those who tried to flee. “The Janjaweed showed no mercy for anyone,” she said, using the local term for the RSF.
RSF commander Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, sanctioned by the United States, acknowledged “abuses” by his forces and said an internal investigation had begun, though he provided no details.
Footage shared online by Darfur Governor Mini Minawi appeared to show bodies strewn across the hospital floor, pools of blood surrounding patients and medical staff. In one clip, an RSF fighter fired into a wounded man who collapsed after the shot. The Associated Press could not independently verify the video but confirmed that mass graves are visible in recent satellite images analyzed by the Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab.
The Yale report said satellite evidence “corroborates claims of mass executions” near Saudi Hospital and the city’s former Children’s Hospital, where dozens of detainees were reportedly killed. Aid groups say the true toll could be far higher, with communication blackouts and ongoing violence hindering rescue efforts.
The United Nations migration agency said more than 36,000 people have fled El-Fasher since Sunday, seeking refuge in rural areas or overcrowded camps. Doctors Without Borders reported treating scores of gunshot victims and receiving dozens of orphaned or malnourished children, including infants whose parents were killed. “Now it’s hell on Earth with lots of guns,” said UNICEF representative Sheldon Yett.
Before the massacre, the U.N. had already documented nearly 2,000 civilian deaths in North Darfur this year. International outrage over the hospital killings grew on Wednesday, with France, Germany, the U.K., and the European Union condemning the RSF’s actions. U.S. Senator Jim Risch called on Washington to designate the group a foreign terrorist organization.
Human Rights Watch researcher Mohamed Osman said the footage from El-Fasher “reveals a horrifying truth: the Rapid Support Forces feel free to carry out mass atrocities with little fear of consequences.”
As Sudan’s civil war enters its third year, aid groups warn that the world’s worst humanitarian crisis is deteriorating rapidly — and that the international community’s failure to act could embolden further atrocities.
