CAIRO — The notorious Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group, fighting Sudan’s military for over a year, fired shots and looted a main hospital in the western region of Darfur, forcing its closure, an international aid group said.
The RSF attacked the South Hospital in al-Fasher, the capital city of North Darfur province, on Sunday, opening fire on medical staff and patients, Doctors Without Borders said in a statement.
Images published by local media showed abandoned wards and corridors at the hospital, with patient beds and other medical equipment damaged and blood stains on the floor. Local news outlets also reported that the military managed to kick RSF fighters out of the hospital.
“It is outrageous that the RSF opened fire inside the hospital. This is not an isolated incident, as staff and patients have endured attacks on the facility for weeks from all sides, but opening fire inside a hospital crosses a line,” said Michel Lacharite, head of emergency operations at Doctors Without Borders.
At the time of the attack, there were 10 patients and a reduced medical crew as the aid group and the Sudanese health ministry had begun evacuating patients and transferring medical services last week to other facilities, the aid group said.
Most patients and the medical team, including Doctors Without Borders staff, managed to flee the shooting. It was not immediately clear whether there were casualties from the attack, according to the aid group.
However, Lacharite said the group’s staff found two bodies inside the facility, and they identified them as an RSF fighter and a military soldier. The circumstances of their deaths were not immediately clear.
The World Health Organization decried the RSF attack on the South Hospital, which is the only facility with surgical capacity in al-Fasher.
The attack came as the RSF intensified its offensive to try and wrest control of the city, the military’s last stronghold in the sprawling Darfur region. Two weeks of fighting last month in and around al-Fasher has killed more than 120 people.
Sudan’s conflict began in April last year when soaring tensions between the leaders of the military and the Rapid Support Forces exploded into open fighting in the capital, Khartoum, and elsewhere in the country.
On Monday, the UN migration agency said the number of internally displaced people in Sudan has reached more than 10 million.
The International Organization for Migration said the tally includes 2.83 million driven from their homes before the current war began by multiple local conflicts in recent years.
More than 2 million other people have been driven abroad, mostly to neighboring Chad, South Sudan, and Egypt, IOM spokesman Mohammedali Abunajela said.
Meanwhile, the military has allied itself with rebel groups and formed a joint force to retain control of the city, where hundreds of thousands of displaced people have taken shelter since the conflict began.
A spokesman for the RSF didn't return phone calls seeking comment.
The facility had been hit by mortar shells and bullets three times between May 25 and June 3, killing two people and wounding 14 patients, Doctors Without Borders said.
The paramilitary group also rampaged through a village in the east-central province of Gezira province, killing more than 100 people a few days earlier.
The war has wrecked Sudan, killing more than 14,000 people and wounding thousands of others, while pushing its population to the brink of famine. The UN food agency warned the warring parties last month that there is a serious risk of widespread starvation and death in Darfur and elsewhere in Sudan if they don’t allow humanitarian aid into the region.