Following a series of attacks by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), 99 wounded patients, including women and children, arrived at health facilities supported by Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) across Sudan's North, Central, and South Darfur states on September 10, four of whom were declared dead on arrival.
“We urge all warring parties to immediately spare civilians, protect medical staff and facilities, and guarantee safe, unhindered access for humanitarian aid, starting in El Fasher and other besieged areas,” said Marwan Taher, MSF head of mission in Darfur. “The humanitarian crisis is spiraling, and the world cannot continue to look away.”
An unbearable situation in and around El Fasher
In Tawila, North Darfur, MSF staff treated 50 wounded patients yesterday alone. In total, more than 650 injured people who have managed to escape the besieged city of El Fasher have arrived at the MSF-supported hospital in Tawila since mid-August. This represents just a fraction of the casualties: Survivors have described seeing many dead bodies on roads and having to leave behind the most critically sick and wounded people, who simply wouldn’t have survived the journey to Tawila.
“Some people have walked 60 kilometers [37 miles] on foot, bleeding from gunshot wounds and severe whippings,” said Sylvain Penicaud, MSF project coordinator in Tawila. “Yet they are the fortunate few who survived the horrors of El Fasher and the journey to escape it. They arrive exhausted, broken, and in such extreme states of distress.”
People also explain how life has become unbearable in and around El Fasher. The RSF and its allies have besieged and bombed the city for over a year, leaving hundreds of thousands of people trapped, with virtually no food, medicines, water, or humanitarian aid. People attempting to escape El Fasher face killings, torture, sexual assault, and other extreme forms of violence along the route to Tawila, which now hosts 800,000 internally displaced people.
Teams activate mass casualty plan amid drone strikes
As Sudan’s war continues in its third year, people are still facing relentless violence with nowhere to flee. On September 10, drones struck multiple locations across Darfur, leaving hundreds of people injured. Even communities far from the front lines are not safe, as attacks often escalate simultaneously across the region.
A SAF drone strike landed just 2.5 miles from the MSF-supported Zalingei Teaching Hospital in Central Darfur, the first since February.
“From the hospital, our teams heard the drone strike,” said Taher. “Moments later, in broad daylight, we had to activate our mass casualty plan as an influx of war-wounded people arrived, including six women and four children. No one is safe.”
Also on September 10, two SAF drones struck the city of Nyala, South Darfur. Nyala Teaching Hospital, which is also supported by MSF, received 12 patients; four people, including one child, were dead on arrival. This was the eighth deadly drone strike on the city in just 11 days, following attacks on August 30 and September 1 and 3, when the hospital treated 44 war-wounded patients.
Constant threat of continuing attacks
The situation in Darfur remains dire, with health facilities under extreme pressure and struggling to cope with massive influxes of patients, severe shortages of supplies, and the constant threat of further attacks.
These simultaneous attacks came just a day after RSF airstrikes hit Khartoum, the Sudanese capital, on September 9, with shrapnel wounding two people who arrived at Al Nao Hospital in Omdurman. The same airstrikes also took out a power station, plunging parts of the city into blackout and forcing Al Nao and Al Buluk Pediatric Hospital—both supported by MSF—to rely on generators or unreliable electricity sources. Without stable electricity, lifesaving medical equipment and air conditioning fail, leaving premature and critically ill children dangerously exposed to overheating, infection, and equipment malfunctions.
