WHO Says Over 460 People Reportedly Killed At A Hospital Taken By Sudanese Paramilitary Forces

CAIRO (AP) — Sudan’s paramilitary forces killed hundreds of people, including patients at a hospital, after seizing the state capital of North Darfur over the weekend, according to the UN. details of brutality.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organization, said 460 patients and their attendants were killed by Rapid Support Forces fighters at the Saudi Hospital in the city of al-Fasher on Tuesday.

Eyewitnesses told The Associated Press that as part of the attack on al-Fasher, RSF fighters also went from house to house, beating and shooting at people, including women and children. Eyewitnesses said many people died in the streets from gunshot wounds, while others died trying to escape to safety.

two years Fighting for control of Sudan It has killed more than 40,000 people – a figure that rights groups consider to be a serious undercount – and created the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, with more than 14 million people displaced. Capture of Al-Fasher Fears are rising by Arab-led powerful force Africa’s third largest country may be divided again Nearly 15 years after oil-rich South Sudan gained independence after years of civil war.

Sudanese and aid workers reveal harrowing details of RSF crackdown atrocities The last bastion of the army After more than 500 days of siege in Darfur.

Fighters from RSF “They murdered in cold blood everyone they found at the Saudi Hospital, including patients, attendants, and anyone in the wards,” according to the Sudan Doctors Network, a medical group that tracks the war.

“Janjaweed showed no mercy to anyone,” Umm Amena, a mother of four who fled the city two days later on Monday, told RSF, using the Sudanese term for RSF.

General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, the US-sanctioned RSF commander, acknowledged what he called “abuses” by his forces. In his first comments since al-Fasher’s downfall, published on the Telegram messaging app on Wednesday, he said an investigation had been launched. He did not explain in detail.

The Associated Press could not independently confirm the hospital attack and the death toll.

Darfur governor Mini Minawi shared a video online purporting to show RSF fighters inside the Saudi Hospital. The one-minute footage shows bodies lying on the ground covered in blood. A warrior fires a single shot from his Kalashnikov-style rifle at a man sitting alone, who then collapses to the ground. Other bodies could also be seen outside. The AP could not independently verify the date, location or circumstances under which the video was recorded.

Amena was among three dozen people, mostly women and children, who were detained for a day by RSF fighters in an abandoned house near the Saudi Hospital in al-Fasher.

The AP interviewed Amena and four others who managed to escape al-Fasher and arrived early Tuesday, exhausted and dehydrated, in the nearby town of Tawila, about 60 kilometers (37 miles) west of al-Fasher, which is already home to more than 650,000 displaced people.

The UN Migration Agency said more than 36,000 people had fled al-Fasher since Sunday, mostly to surrounding rural areas.

Jacqueline Wilma Parlevliet, an official with the UN Refugee Agency, said the new arrivals spoke of widespread killings driven by ethnic and political differences, including reports of people with disabilities being shot to death because they could not escape and others being shot while trying to escape.

“This place was like a killing field,” Tajal-Rahman, a man in his late 50s, said over the phone from the outskirts of Tawila. “There are dead bodies everywhere, people are bleeding and there is no one to help them.”

Both Amena and Tajal-Rahman said RSF fighters tortured and beat detainees on Monday and shot at least four people who later died of wounds. They also said that they sexually assaulted women and girls.

A hospital run by Médecins Sans Frontières in Tawila has received several patients suffering from bombing or gunshot wounds since October 18, according to Giulia Chiopris, a pediatrician at the hospital.

He said the hospital also received many children who had escaped from al-Fasher, many of whom were unaccompanied or orphaned, malnourished and severely dehydrated.

“We are seeing a lot of trauma cases and a lot of orphans related to the last bombing,” he said.

He recalled picking up his three younger siblings, ages 40 days to 4 years old, whose parents had been killed in the city. He said they were brought to the hospital by strangers on Monday night.

In a report released late Tuesday, the Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Laboratory said RSF fighters have continued to commit mass killings since capturing al-Fasher.

The report, based on satellite imagery from Airbus, said it confirmed RSF’s allegations of executions and mass killings around the Saudi Hospital and at a detention center at the former Children’s Hospital in the eastern part of the city. The AP accessed and analyzed the same footage and saw objects on the ground and red stains where the lab identified blood and bodies.

The laboratory also said “systematic killings” occurred near the eastern wall, which RSF built outside the city earlier this year.

Sheldon Yett, UNICEF’s representative in Sudan, said in an interview that the situation in al-Fasher was “an absolute disaster”, with thousands of children already suffering from disease and famine before the city was captured by RSF.

“There’s a hell on Earth now with lots of weapons,” Yett said.

Aid groups said it was difficult to determine the death toll since RSF captured al-Fasher due to a near communications blackout.

Satellite images failed to show the true extent of the mass shootings and the estimated death toll was likely an undercount, Yale’s report said.

Before the latest violence, approximately 1,850 civilians were killed in North Darfur between January 1 and October 20 this year, including 1,350 in Al-Fasher, according to UN spokesman Farhan Aziz Haq.

Footage of the attack caused a wave of outrage around the world. France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the European Union condemned the persecution.

Mohamed Osman, Sudan researcher for Human Rights Watch, said the footage from al-Fasher “reveals a terrible truth: Rapid Support Forces are free to commit mass atrocities with little fear of consequences.”

“The world needs to take action to protect civilians from more heinous crimes,” he said.

Massad Boulos, US senior advisor for Arab and African affairs, condemned the attacks.

“The intentional targeting of defenseless populations through acts of violence and retaliation is both disgusting and unacceptable,” Boulos wrote. Lebanese-American businessman He is the father-in-law of President Donald Trump’s daughter Tiffany.

“We accept the RSF leadership’s recent statements on civilian protection, humanitarian access and accountability, but words alone do not save lives. These commitments must urgently be translated into concrete actions on the ground to alleviate the suffering of the Sudanese people.”

Sen. Jim Risch, chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, condemned RSF attacks on the city on Tuesday and called for its designation as a foreign terrorist organization. “RSF committed terrorism and unspeakable atrocities, including genocide, against the Sudanese people,” he wrote.

Associated Press writer Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report.