JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — For months doctors at the last functioning hospital in the wartorn Sudanese city of el-Fasher performed operations by torchlight, desperately trying to save lives in the most impossible conditions.
The Saudi Maternity Hospital was a last refuge for the sick and injured in the besieged city, as fighting raged around them. Despite no electricity, shortages of supplies, and frequently coming under heavy shelling, medical staff kept going.
"They are heroes, honestly," said Dr Mohamed Faisal Elsheikh, a Sudanese medical doctor based in Manchester and a spokesperson for the Sudan Doctors Network.
"They really work in a very difficult environment, they had no medical instruments, there's no any medicines over there, there's no electricity…and yet with all dedication and commitment…they saved as much as they could of people's lives."
No longer. Since the city fell to the Sudanese paramilitary group the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) on Sunday, the doctors have been kidnapped and reports have emerged of a massacre at the hospital.
"On 28 October, six health workers, four doctors, a nurse and a pharmacist, were abducted," from the hospital, the World Health Organization said in a statement Wednesday. "On the same day, more than 460 patients and their companions were reportedly shot and killed in the hospital."
WHO head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he was "deeply shocked" and "appalled" by the massacre and called for health facilities, health workers and patients to be protected under international law.
"Prior to this latest attack, WHO has verified 185 attacks on health care in Sudan with 1204 deaths and 416 injuries of health workers and patients since the start of the conflict in April 2023," he said.
Videos of the attack believed to have been filmed by RSF fighters themselves are circulating online. While they cannot be independently verified by NPR, they show militia men walking through the ransacked wards, stepping over piles of dead bodies and shooting anyone left alive at point blank range.
RSF leader, General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo has pledged to investigate the allegations of war crimes by his soldiers in el-Fasher - but many doubt his sincerity, as he has failed to investigate previous atrocities.
Since overtaking el-Fasher– which they had besieged for over 500 days – and chasing out the Sudanese army, videos, satellite imagery, and testimony from those who've managed to flee indicate the RSF has been pursuing a scorched earth policy in the Darfuri city.
The RSF has been fighting the national army for control of the resource-rich nation that sits at the vital crossroads between North Africa, the Sahel, and the Red Sea in a bloody civil war since 2023.
'Crisis of apathy'
The group emerged from the janjaweed militia that terrorized Darfur in the early 2000s and was accused of genocide. The US has already accused the RSF and allied Arab militias of committing genocide against African ethnic groups in the current conflict.
The situation in el-Fasher was dire even before the RSF overran it this week. The year and a half long blockade of some 250,000 civilians has led to starvation and famine.
The UN's migration organization says 26,000 people have managed to flee since the takeover. Many of those are arriving seeking help in the town of Tawila, in north Darfur, where medical charity Doctors Without Borders is running the closest health point.
Doctors Without Borders used to provide support to the Saudi hospital but stopped operating in el-Fasher in August 2024 saying it had become too dangerous.
On Wednesday the NGO said people arriving at Tawila were showing "extremely alarming levels of malnutrition among women and children, which is indicative of a famine-like situation."
The organization's International president Dr Mohamed Javid Abdelmoneim noted however, that very few adult men were arriving, and said this raised concerns about ethnically targeted violence.
"This is testament to the horror unfolding in and around the city," he said.
One mother of six, who had fled el-Fasher but didn't wish to be named to protect her identity, told aid workers from international NGO Save the Children what they had endured.
"We hid the children in trenches, and we ran into abandoned buildings during the attacks. After that, we just ate umbaz (animal feed)," she said.
Another woman described the long trek to safety, during which she was beaten and robbed by a gang.
"We lost family members, we lost neighbors, we lost everyone," she recounted. "We've been walking for the past four days from el-Fasher. A group of motorbike riders met us on the way…They killed people and insulted us a lot."
The UN Security Council held a meeting on the crisis Thursday.
The UN's humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher said the violence recalls the horrors of the genocide in Darfur two decades ago.
"But what is different today, we are seeing a different global reaction. One of resignation," he said. "So this is also a crisis of apathy."
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