Attacks on Hospitals, Clinics and Aid Workers

RSF drone strikes and ground attacks have repeatedly hit hospitals, clinics and humanitarian facilities across Sudan, killing patients, medical staff and civilians, including a strike that killed at least 10 people (7 of them medical staff) at a White Nile hospital and a strike on a kindergarten and hospital in Kalogi that killed 114 people, including 63 children.

Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) reported that on 2 April, the RSF carried out a drone strike on a hospital in White Nile state, killing at least 10 people, including 7 medical staff. A separate 20 March Sudanese Armed Forces drone strike on a hospital in East Darfur killed 70 people, including 15 children -- documented here for context on the pattern of attacks on medical facilities by multiple parties, though that specific strike is attributed to the SAF, not the RSF.

The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said the use of drones in populated areas "underlines the devastating impact of high-tech and relatively cheap weapons" on civilians.
— OHCHR, March

In early December 2025, RSF drones reportedly struck a kindergarten and hospital in Kalogi, South Kordofan, killing at least 114 people, including 63 children -- part of an escalating campaign of air and drone strikes on the Kordofan region hitting civilian infrastructure including medical facilities and schools since October.

At Al Saudi Hospital in El Fasher, Sudanese civil-society sources reported that RSF fighters killed everyone in the hospital or left them to die after the city's capture; satellite imagery from Yale School of Public Health's Humanitarian Research Lab corroborated clusters of objects consistent with human remains and reddish ground discoloration appearing outside hospitals in the city in the days following the takeover.

Human Rights Watch documented that during the fall of El Fasher, survivors described a campaign of bombardment killing large numbers of civilians alongside widespread massacres, arbitrary detentions and systematic abduction for ransom -- occurring despite repeated civil-society warnings about the risk of mass atrocities that went unheeded by other countries.

Academic research on the education sector documents that the RSF controls 39% of public universities and 73% of private universities in Khartoum State, with lower but still significant control in Gezira and South Darfur. Over 50% of medical colleges and private schools in Khartoum have been targeted, with 64.7% of affected schools experiencing multiple types of attack, looting at 73.5% of assaulted colleges, and 67.6% repurposed as military installations.

By late 2025, an estimated 80% of hospitals in Sudan's most conflict-affected areas were non-functional, a collapse of the health system that separately denies survivors of violence, including sexual violence, access to essential post-attack medical care.

Sources

  • Human Rights Watch -- MSF-reported hospital drone strikes (White Nile, East Darfur); survivor accounts of bombardment during El Fasher's fall
  • Global R2P -- Kalogi kindergarten/hospital drone strike; North Kordofan displacement and civilian targeting figures
  • Peer-reviewed study (Cogent Social Sciences) -- Data on RSF control and attacks on universities, medical colleges and schools
  • DW (Deutsche Welle) -- Al Saudi Hospital killings and satellite corroboration