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Sudan’s hospitals are under attack. Our doctors are going back.
This week, a BBC investigation found evidence of at least 43 attacks on hospitals and health facilities in el-Fasher during the siege of the city, and a drone strike on a market in Abyei killed at least 153 people. On 1 November, 50 of our doctors go back to Sudan, to work in hospitals that have kept going through three and a half years of war.
What the BBC found in el-Fasher
El-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, was besieged by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) until its fighters took the city in October 2025. The RSF has been at war with Sudan’s army since April 2023.
A BBC investigation published on 23 October found evidence of at least 43 attacks on el-Fasher’s hospitals and health facilities between May 2024 and October 2025. Six doctors told the BBC of a pattern of systematic targeting, and the BBC found that when some hospitals moved to get away from the attacks, their new sites were attacked too (BBC News, 2026).
The BBC counted 55 health workers killed in el-Fasher between April 2023 and October 2025, 120 injured and 10 abducted or disappeared. Doctors told the BBC that the Saudi Maternity Hospital, which became the city’s last working hospital, was hit by shelling and drones, on some days up to 25 times. One described a drone strike in March 2025 that killed nine people as they carried wounded patients to a temporary ward.
The attacks on the hospital ended in October 2025, when RSF fighters stormed it. More than 460 patients and their companions were reported killed. The WHO condemned the reported killings, and told the BBC that el-Fasher is “one of the clearest and most severe examples” of the war’s impact on health care in Sudan (BBC News, 2026).
“It was intense. It was deliberate. It was planned.”
Dr Muhamed Suliman, a surgeon in el-Fasher during the siege, to the BBC.
The RSF denies there was a massacre. The health minister in the RSF-backed government called the findings propaganda and said one hospital had been used as a military base. The BBC found no independent evidence of that (BBC News, 2026).
A market on fire in Abyei
On Monday 19 October, a drone struck Amiet market in Abyei, the region on Sudan’s border that both Sudan and South Sudan claim. It hit a fuel depot, and the fire was still burning the next day. A local official said at least 153 people had been killed, and that the toll was still rising (Machol, 2026; Al Jazeera, 2026).
Doctors Without Borders (MSF), working at Ameth Bek Hospital with South Sudan’s health ministry, took in more than 20 of the wounded, several of them critical and some with burns. MSF has called on all sides to stop attacking civilians (Machol, 2026).
A mass casualty of that size would stretch a hospital anywhere in the world.
Attacks on hospitals in Sudan
El-Fasher is one of the clearest cases, but not the only one. By April this year, the WHO had verified 217 attacks on health care in Sudan since the war began on 15 April 2023, with 2,052 people killed and 810 injured. Across the country’s 18 states, 37% of health facilities were not working, and 21 million people needed health assistance (World Health Organization, 2026).
When a hospital is hit, a city loses more than a building. It loses its operating theatres, its maternity ward and its clinics, the places people go to stay alive. The patients don’t stop coming: the wounded from a market, a mother in labour, a child who needs an operation. They just have fewer places to go.
Why our doctors are going back
In April, 18 of our doctors worked in Sudan’s Northern State: gunshot wounds, spinal injuries, badly healed fractures, and clinics for displaced families. In June, the WHO’s emergency medical teams and Sudan’s Federal Ministry of Health wrote to thank them.
On 1 November, In Sha Allah, 50 doctors go back, our biggest deployment yet. Our surgeons and specialists will work alongside WHO teams in hospitals that have kept going through three and a half years of war: operating, treating patients, and training the local staff who stay when we leave. Between them they cover thoracic, cardiovascular, orthopaedic and eye surgery, maternal and child health, and infection management. There is more on the mission on our Save Lives in Sudan page.
The doctors give their own time, and they know what they are going into. They have read this week’s news like everyone else. They are still going.
Help send them
What our doctors need from us is everything they will use when they get there: the consumables and implants for each operation, the care for each patient, and the training they leave behind with the hospital’s own staff.
That is what our Doctors Deployment Support Project pays for, and you can give to it as Zakah, Sadaqah or Lillah. If this week’s news has stayed with you, this is one thing you can do about it today.
References
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References
- Al Jazeera (2026) ‘Drone attack in disputed Sudan-South Sudan border region kills at least 153’, Al Jazeera, 21 October. Available at: aljazeera.com (Accessed: 23 October 2026).
- BBC News (2026) ‘Hospitals deliberately targeted by Sudan’s RSF fighters, BBC investigation finds’, BBC News, 23 October. Available at: bbc.com (Accessed: 23 October 2026).
- Machol, D. (2026) ‘Drone strike on a market in disputed African region of Abyei kills at least 153’, Associated Press, 20 October. Available at: abcnews.com (Accessed: 23 October 2026).
- World Health Organization (2026) After three years of conflict, Sudan faces a deeper health crisis. News release, 14 April. Geneva: WHO. Available at: who.int (Accessed: 23 October 2026).
