At Least 460 Killed in Maternity Hospital Massacre

A chilling massacre has left at least 460 people dead after paramilitary forces stormed Sudan’s last operating maternity hospital, slaughtering patients, doctors, and refugees who had sought shelter inside.

Witnesses say the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) — a brutal paramilitary faction born from the notorious Janjaweed militias — turned the Saudi Maternity Hospital into a killing field earlier this week. Satellite images analyzed by the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab show blood-soaked sand and scattered bodies around the facility, once a rare sanctuary amid the war-torn city of El Fasher.

“It’s a massacre unlike anything we’ve seen in this conflict,” said Dr. Leila Osman, a Sudanese physician who fled the region last year. “They killed the sick, the wounded, and even the children trying to hide under hospital beds.”

El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, had endured an 18-month siege before the RSF broke through last weekend. Within just 48 hours, over 2,000 people were reported dead across the city. Footage circulating online — verified by international monitors — appeared to show a child soldier executing an unarmed man, underscoring the chaos and depravity of the attacks.

The World Health Organization confirmed the deaths of hundreds inside the hospital and the abduction of at least six medical staff, including a nurse and a pharmacist. “On the same day, more than 460 patients and their companions were reportedly shot and killed in the hospital,” the WHO said in a statement, calling the atrocity “an appalling violation of international humanitarian law.”

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus condemned the attack, urging all sides to respect the sanctity of hospitals and medical personnel: “Health workers are not targets. Patients are not targets.”

The attack marks a devastating escalation in a war that has raged since April 2023, pitting the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) against the RSF in a violent struggle for control of the country. Once allies in a 2021 military coup, the two groups have since plunged Sudan into a nightmare of ethnic killings, famine, and mass displacement.

According to the United Nations, over 24 million Sudanese — roughly 40 percent of the population — are now food insecure, and more than four million have fled to neighboring nations such as Chad, South Sudan, and the Central African Republic.

“The people of Sudan are being starved, bombed, and slaughtered while the world debates,” said Martin Griffiths, the UN’s humanitarian chief. “We are witnessing blood on the sand — and blood on our hands if we do nothing.”

Residents who escaped El Fasher described scenes of horror to the Associated Press — homes ransacked, families gunned down, and bodies left to rot in the streets. “They went house to house,” said Amina Ibrahim, a survivor who fled on foot with her two young sons. “Anyone who tried to hide was beaten or shot. We saw neighbors killed for having food.”

The United Nations Security Council has been urged to take “immediate and robust action” to stop the atrocities, though diplomats privately acknowledge that geopolitical divisions have paralyzed intervention efforts.

For many Sudanese, the massacre at the maternity hospital has become a symbol of the world’s indifference. “If they can kill mothers and newborns in a hospital,” said a Sudanese aid worker now in N’Djamena, “what hope is left for the rest of us?”

Human rights groups are demanding war crimes investigations and sanctions against RSF leaders. Human Rights Watch called the assault “a deliberate extermination of civilians,” while Doctors Without Borders described it as “the darkest day in Sudan’s medical history.”

Yet even as condemnation grows, the killings continue. Entire communities have been wiped out in Darfur, and hunger has become as deadly as the bullets.

“Every hour that passes costs lives,” said a senior UN official. “Sudan is bleeding, and the world is looking away.”