In the besieged Darfur city of el-Fasher, the war followed the patients. Every time doctors moved their wounded to a new building, the bombs came to the new building too. That pattern — documented by a BBC investigation published this week — is now the basis of an allegation that Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces systematically destroyed a city’s entire healthcare system, something the UN’s human rights chief says may amount to war crimes.
The BBC’s investigators, working with sources on the ground in el-Fasher, documented at least 43 separate attacks on hospitals and health sites between May 2024 and October 2025. Some facilities were hit repeatedly. By the time the RSF seized the city — the capital of North Darfur, which it had besieged for over a year — only one hospital was still functioning.
The human cost among medical workers was severe: 120 injured, 55 killed and 10 abducted or forcibly disappeared between April 2023 and October 2025. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk called the findings “deeply disturbing,” saying multiple attacks by the RSF on civilian infrastructure, including health facilities, were serious violations of international humanitarian law and may amount to war crimes.
How el-Fasher’s hospitals fell, one by one
- May 2024 — Teaching Hospital forced out. The city’s main teaching hospital closes under bombardment. Medical teams relocate to South Hospital.
- Late May to early June 2024 — South Hospital shelled. The hospital is shelled repeatedly and then raided on June 8, forcing another move. Teams carry their patients to the Saudi Maternity Hospital.
- Mid-2024 onward — the Saudi Maternity Hospital. The maternity hospital is struck repeatedly — at times many times in a single day. Medics perform a Caesarean section by phone light on the day it is bombed.
- 2024–2025 — the chase continues. A children’s hospital is shelled at two successive relocation sites. A dialysis centre is hit again after it moves. Sandbags, underground wards built from steel containers, alternative wards — every improvisation is eventually found.
- October 25, 2025 — the storming of Saudi Hospital. RSF fighters storm the Saudi Hospital amid reports that more than 460 patients and companions were killed. The RSF denied that account. The World Health Organization condemned the reported killings.
“It was deliberate. It was planned.”
Dr Muhamed Suliman, a surgeon who worked in el-Fasher through the siege, told the BBC what the pattern looked like from inside. “The RSF [were] trying to evacuate the hospitals, to put them out of service because the health system is the cornerstone of any city or any state,” he said. “The RSF started hitting these areas so citizens have no longer any way to stay there. It was intense. It was deliberate. It was planned.”
The RSF has rejected the findings. Its health minister, Dr Alaa Eldin Nugud, called the allegations propaganda — a deliberate attempt by the national army and its allies to smear the RSF’s reputation. He told the BBC that missile launchers had been set up on the grounds of South Hospital, and shared video of weapons remains filmed more than a year after the hospital closed. Under international law, a hospital can lose its protection if it is used to commit an act harmful to the enemy.
Doctors who worked in el-Fasher denied the hospital had been turned into a military base, saying they had visited it during the war to collect medical equipment. The BBC said it found no independent evidence for Nugud’s claim, and the Darfur regional government categorically rejected the charges.
Why this matters
Sudan’s civil war — between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the RSF since April 2023 — has become one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises while attracting a fraction of the world’s attention. The BBC’s investigation matters for two reasons beyond Darfur. First, the World Health Organization says el-Fasher represents “one of the clearest and most severe examples of the wider impact of the conflict on health care in Sudan” — the documented record now exists for future war-crimes cases, wherever and whenever they are heard. Second, the alleged playbook — dismantling a city’s medical system to make the city unlivable — has already been tested against the world once: earlier this year, the WHO condemned an attack on al-Daein hospital in eastern Darfur, believed to have been a Sudanese military drone strike that the army denied.
Both sides now stand accused of striking health facilities. What the BBC documented in el-Fasher was something narrower and darker: not collateral damage, but a campaign.
For context on Sudan’s contested territories and the war’s recent flashpoints, see our Explains piece on Abyei, the disputed land at the heart of the Amiet market drone strike and our coverage of the Amiet market strike.
