BBC finds 43 attacks on el-Fasher hospitals, RSF denies

A BBC investigation has documented at least 43 separate attacks on hospitals and health sites in the Sudanese city of el-Fasher between May 2024 and October 2025, and the United Nations human rights chief said the strikes may amount to war crimes.

The BBC reported Friday that its data shows 120 health workers were injured, 55 were killed and 10 were forcibly disappeared or abducted in el-Fasher between April 2023 and October 2025. The findings come a year after the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) took the Darfur city after a long siege.

UN human rights chief Volker Türk called the findings “deeply disturbing” and said multiple attacks on civilian infrastructure, including health facilities, were serious violations of international humanitarian law and may amount to war crimes, the BBC reported.

Dr. Alaa Eldin Nugud, the health minister in the RSF-affiliated civilian government, dismissed the allegations as propaganda and said the army and its allies were trying to smear the group. He told the BBC that missile launchers were set up on the grounds of South Hospital, which he said supported his claim that it was being used as a military base. The BBC said it found no independent evidence for that allegation, and the Darfur regional government rejected the charges.

Under international law, hospitals can lose their protection if a party to the conflict uses them to commit an act harmful to the enemy. Attacking health facilities or their staff is otherwise illegal in war.

Six doctors told the BBC they saw a pattern of deliberate targeting. “It was intense. It was deliberate. It was planned,” said Dr. Muhamed Suliman, a surgeon who worked in the city during the siege. Medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said at the time that it did not know whether hospitals were being intentionally targeted, but that the fighting parties were taking no precautions to spare them.

According to the BBC, South Hospital was shelled repeatedly in May and June 2024 and was raided by RSF fighters on June 8, 2024. Staff and equipment later moved to the Saudi Maternity Hospital, which was struck on some days up to 25 times by shelling and drones, doctors said. By the time the RSF seized the city in October 2025, the Saudi Hospital was the only functioning health facility left.

The World Health Organization told the BBC that el-Fasher was “one of the clearest and most severe examples of the wider impact of the conflict on health care in Sudan.” Both sides in the war, which began in April 2023 between the RSF and the Sudanese army, have been accused of attacking health facilities. In March 2026, the WHO condemned the bombing of al-Daein hospital in RSF-held eastern Darfur, an attack the army is believed to have carried out but denied.

The Canadian connection is humanitarian funding and the Sudanese community here. Canada announced more than $120 million in aid for Sudan and neighbouring countries on April 15, 2026, at the International Sudan Conference in Berlin, according to Global Affairs Canada. Canada has also raised its refugee quota for people fleeing the war, as we reported earlier.

Our earlier coverage detailed how drone strikes killed children while the UN aid plan for Sudan remained 43 per cent funded. The BBC’s investigation is the most detailed public account so far of how the health system in el-Fasher was dismantled.

Via BBC News: Hospitals deliberately targeted by Sudan’s RSF fighters, BBC finds.

If you find reporting like this useful, consider supporting Canada News Media, an independent Canadian newsroom with no corporate parent.