More than 100 people killed in hospital attack in Sudan, WHO chief reveals

The head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has described an attack on a kindergarten and hospital in Sudan, which he said killed 114 people, as “senseless”.

Drones were used to attack the facilities on Thursday in the town of Kalogi, in the South Kordofan region, with 63 children said by the UN to be among the dead.

The Rapid Support Forces (RSF), one of the sides in the country’s raging civil war, was accused by both its enemy, the army, and a medical organisation, the Sudan Doctors’ Network, of mounting the attack.

In another development, the RSF claimed control of the country’s largest oil field, Heglig.

Sudan has been ravaged by war since April 2023 when a power struggle broke out between the RSF and the army, who were formerly allies.

Situated between Sudan’s capital Khartoum and Darfur, the region made up of North Kordofan, South Kordofan and West Kordofan has been a frontline in the civil war.

The battle for the Kordofans – which have a population of almost eight million – has intensified as the army pushes towards Darfur, which is under RSF control.

Initial reports suggested that at least 50 people, including 33 children, had been killed in Kalogi, which is held by the army.

According to the WHO’s Attacks on Health Care monitoring system, 114 died and 35 were injured.

Local official Essam al-Din al-Sayed, head of the Kalogi administrative unit, told AFP news agency that drone attacks struck “first a kindergarten, then a hospital and a third time as people tried to rescue the children”.

There was no immediate comment from the RSF who have in the past denied harming civilians but were accused by Mr Tedros in October of killing hundreds of civilians at the main hospital in the Darfur city of el-Fasher.

Credit: bbc.com

 

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