UN calls for end to Sudan siege after mass hospital killings

AFP | Port Sudan

Email : editor@newsofbahrain.com

UN chief Antonio Guterres called for an immediate end to military escalation in Sudan yesterday after reports that more than 460 people were shot dead in a maternity hospital by paramilitary forces.

Mohammad Hamdan Daglo, the head of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitaries which recently seized the city of El-Fasher from army forces, has vowed the country would be unified by “peace or through war”.

The capture of El-Fasher, the last army holdout in the vast western region of Darfur, comes after more than 18 months of brutal siege, sparking fears of a return to the ethnically targeted atrocities of 20 years ago.

Accusations of mass killings have mounted, with the World Health Organization (WHO) condemning reports that 460 people were killed at the Saudi Maternity Hospital, the last partially functional hospital in El-Fasher.

The WHO said the hospital was on Sunday “attacked for the fourth time in a month, killing one nurse and injuring three other health workers”.

Two days later, “six health workers, four doctors, a nurse and a pharmacist, were abducted” and “more than 460 patients and their companions were reportedly shot and killed in the hospital,” the organisation said.

Guterres said in a statement he was “gravely concerned by the recent military escalation” in El-Fasher, calling for “an immediate end to the siege & hostilities”.

International powers have struggled for months to mediate an end to the fighting between the paramilitaries and the regular army, raging since April 2023.

Daglo’s paramilitaries now control most of western Sudan, Africa’s third-largest country, while the regular army under Abdel Fattah al-Burhan dominates the north, east and centre.

While the army regained full control over the capital Khartoum in March, the RSF has set up a parallel administration in the southwestern city of Nyala.

Analysts warn that the country is now de facto partitioned and may prove very hard to piece back together.

Daglo said in a speech Wednesday that he was “sorry for the inhabitants of El-Fasher for the disaster that has befallen them” and that civilians were off limits.