More than 2 million people in Darfur left without proper care after drone strike on major hospital

CAIRO (AP) — More than 2 million people in Sudan’s Darfur region have been left without proper medical care after a drone strike last week took a major hospital out of service, the World Health Organization and a senior aid official say.

The strike, blamed on the military, killed 70 people and wrecked Al Daein Teaching Hospital, which had served people across the province of East Darfur. Satellite imagery released Wednesday showed extensive damage to the hospital.

The army has denied targeting the medical facility, which is in an area controlled by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. The group has been fighting against the Sudanese military since April 2023 in a war that has pushed parts of the country into famine and is marked by widespread atrocities.

The strike destroyed the hospital

Bedreldin Abduelnabi, who heads the activities of the humanitarian health care provider Alight in East Darfur and West Kordofan, said the strike damaged all of the hospital’s wards, including emergency, medicine, surgery, pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology, and renal dialysis.

“The facility is now completely out of service,” he said in a testimony shared by the United Nations Population Fund. “This has created a severe gap in access to life-saving health care across the area.”

He says his group is now assisting a primary health care center to help bridge the gap created by the strike in the area.

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The facility had served as a referral hospital for over 2 million people in Al Daein city and nine other districts in East Darfur, said Hala Khudari, WHO’s deputy representative in Sudan.

People “may have to travel over 160 kilometers (100 miles) to reach the next referral hospital, which, for patients requiring specialized services, is very difficult,” she said.

The dead from Friday’s strike included 13 children and seven women and it also wounded 146 people, including patients and their family members, according to the WHO, which updated the number of casualties on Tuesday. The hospital’s pediatric, maternity, and emergency departments were damaged in the attack.

Satellite images show damage from ‘precise impacts’

The Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab, HRL, said the damage seen in satellite imagery indicated the hospital suffered “multiple precise impacts.”

HRL said the analyzed images showed at least two areas inside the facility were damaged, as well as metal tension rods from a damaged roof structure and metal panels caved in. Piles of brick debris were also seen inside hospital rooms and along an exterior wall. A road near the hospital also suffered damage.

No damage was visible in buildings surrounding the facility, including a police station, indicating that the hospital was “specifically targeted,” according to HRL.

The military has been blamed for the strike

The RSF and groups tracking the Sudan war claimed that the military launched the strike.

Hassan Hamida, who was appointed as executive director of the RSF-controlled Health Ministry in East Darfur, told local media it was a two-hit attack, each 20 minutes apart, that happened Friday evening.

The army has denied the allegations, but two military officials said the strike was targeting a nearby police station. They spoke on the condition of anonymity as they were not allowed to discuss the matter openly.

Marta Hurtado, spokesperson for the U.N. Human Rights Office, said both warring parties use drones extensively, including a strike on a convoy of commercial transportation vehicles that killed 23 people over the weekend in Al Daein.

This “underlines the devastating impact of high-tech and relatively cheap weapons in populated areas,” Hurtado said.

The strike was the latest on a health care facility in the Sudan war, which is approaching its third anniversary next month. More than 2,000 people were killed in 213 attacks on medical care, including Friday’s strike, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO chief, said over the weekend.

The devastating war has killed more than 40,000 people, according to U.N. figures, but aid groups say that is an undercount and the true number could be many times higher.

The fighting has recently centered in Darfur and Kordofan region, where deadly attacks, mostly by drones, have been reported daily. More than 500 civilians were killed in drone strikes this year as of mid-March, the U.N. Human Rights Office said.

The war has been marked by mass killings, gang rape and other crimes, that was being investigated by the International Criminal Court as potential war crimes and crimes against humanity. An October attack by the RSF on the Darfur city of el-Dasher bore “hallmarks of genocide,” according to U.N.-commissioned experts.