The World Health Organization reported on Monday that 114 people, including 63 children, were killed in “senseless” attacks on a hospital and kindergarten in Sudan’s South Kordofan state last week.
According to local official Essam al-Din al-Sayed, chairman of the Kalogi administrative unit, Thursday’s paramilitary drone attack on the army-held town hit “first a kindergarten, then a hospital, and a third time as people tried to rescue the children”.
Sudan’s regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces have been fighting since April 2023, killing tens of thousands and displacing roughly 12 million people.
Following their late-October seizure of El-Fasher, the army’s last stronghold in western Sudan, the RSF has marched eastward into the oil-rich Kordofan region, which is separated into three states.
The strikes “hit a kindergarten and, at least three times, the nearby Kalogi Rural Hospital, killing 114 people, including 63 children, and injuring 35 people,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on X, citing the UN Health Agency’s Attacks on Health Care monitoring system.
Survivors of Thursday’s attack have been transported to Abu Jebaiha Hospital in South Kordofan for treatment, and Tedros has issued an urgent plea for blood donations and other medical assistance.
“Disturbingly, paramedics and responders came under attack as they tried to move the injured from the kindergarten to the hospital,” he said.
“WHO deplores these senseless attacks on civilians and health facilities and calls again for an end to the violence and increased access to humanitarian aid, including health.
“Sudanese have suffered far too much. Ceasefire now!”
While the WHO counts and confirms attacks on health care, it does not assign blame because it is not an investigative body.
According to the World Health Organization, the attacks, which occurred between 6:00 a.m. and noon, targeted health care facilities and patients.
Its event record includes violence with heavy weapons, obstruction to health care delivery, and “psychological violence/threat of violence/intimidation.”
This year, the WHO has recorded 63 attacks on health care in Sudan, killing 1,611 people and injuring 259 others. The attacks affected 52 people, 45 facilities, and 32 patients.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was “appalled” by reports of Thursday’s tragic attack, his spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said in New York.
“The secretary-general calls on all states with influence over the parties to take immediate action and use their leverage to compel an immediate halt to the fighting and stop the arms flows that are fueling the conflict,” he said.
