Hospitals deliberately targeted by Sudan's RSF fighters, BBC investigation finds

Hospitals in Sudan’s besieged city of el-Fasher were deliberately targeted by fighters from the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, a BBC investigation has found.

The investigation, by Africa correspondent Barbara Plett Usher and Mohamed Madi, documents at least 43 separate attacks on hospitals and healthcare sites in el-Fasher from May 2024 to October 2025, with some facilities struck multiple times. Six doctors described to the BBC a pattern of systematic targeting of the city’s medical infrastructure during the RSF’s long siege of the Darfur city, with corroboration cited from the World Health Organization and Médecins Sans Frontières.

Among the facilities named are South Hospital, which was shelled in late May and early June 2024 before RSF fighters raided it on 8 June; the Saudi Maternity Hospital, which was repeatedly hit — on some days up to 25 times — and stood as the only functioning health facility when the RSF seized the city in October 2025; alongside the Teaching Hospital, the Specialised Children’s Hospital and the city’s main dialysis centre, which was attacked again after staff relocated it.

The BBC’s data records 120 medical workers injured, 55 killed and 10 disappeared or abducted in el-Fasher between April 2023 and October 2025.

UN human rights chief Volker Türk called the findings “deeply disturbing”, saying the RSF’s multiple attacks on civilian infrastructure, including health facilities, were serious violations of international humanitarian law and may amount to war crimes.

The RSF rejected the findings as propaganda. An RSF health minister claimed South Hospital had been used as a military base — a claim the BBC said it found no independent evidence to support.