The head of the World Health Organization has condemned an attack on a hospital in Sudan that he said had killed more than 40 civilians, as the country’s civil war, which has caused the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, rages on.
The attack on al-Mujlad hospital in West Kordofan happened on Saturday close to the frontline between the Sudanese military and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The WHO’s local office said that six children and five health workers were among the dead and that there were “dozens of injuries”.
The WHO director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said in a post on X: “We cannot say this louder: attacks on health must stop everywhere!”
The RSF said in a statement on its website that the armed forces were responsible for Saturday’s attack. “The Rapid Support Forces strongly condemn and denounce the barbaric aggression … This attack constitutes a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law, including the 1949 Geneva conventions, which explicitly prohibit the targeting of health facilities and personnel,” it said.
The news site Darfur 24 cited the West Kordofan Emergency Response Rooms, part of a network of Sudanese grassroots humanitarian groups, as saying the attack was an airstrike carried out using a Sudanese military plane. Emergency Lawyers, a group that documents abuses by both sides in the war, said the hospital was hit by a military drone.
The United Nations’ children’s agency, Unicef, said in an X post: “The attacks do not only kill and injure but also severely impede the communities’ ability to receive life-saving services. We urge the government and all parties to the conflict to uphold their obligations under international humanitarian law. The attacks and violence must end now.”
