Sudan’s 15-month war has led to indiscriminate violence and repeated attacks on health workers, the Doctors Without Borders (MSF) charity said in a report released on Monday.
“The price paid by civilians in this war qualifies a conflict seemingly between warring factions, as a war on the people of Sudan,” the report said.
War has raged in the northeast African country for more than a year between Abdel Fattah al-Burhan’s army (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.
“The population has faced horrendous levels of violence, succumbing to widespread fighting and surviving repeated attacks, abuse, and exploitation by” both warring parties, says the report, entitled “A War on People: The Human Cost of Conflict and Violence in Sudan”.
The war, which began in April 2023, has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths and uprooted more than seven million people in addition to nearly four million previously displaced in the country, creating the world’s largest internal displacement crisis, according to the United Nations.
The war’s consequences “on the health and well-being of people in Sudan are disastrous,” said the MSF report, which noted “pervasive” sexual and gender-based violence.
While many aid organisations closed operations in Sudan because of the war, MSF continues to operate in eight states across the country.
The charity said it had treated thousands of conflict-related injuries, most “caused by explosions, gunshots and stabbings.”
At Al Nao hospital in Omdurman, the capital of Khartoum’s sister city, “6,776 patients were treated for injuries caused by violence between 15 August 2023 and 30 April 2024, an average of 26 people per day,” MSF said.
Al Nao has been shelled “on three separate occasions,” and “throughout the war, hospitals have been routinely looted and attacked,” it said.
Vickie Hawkins, general director of MSF Netherlands, told a press conference, “Nowhere is safe for communities trapped in Sudan conflict hot spots.”
She said, “patients recount horrific stories of inhuman treatment and violence, perpetrated by armed groups.”
These include “forced defections, looting and arson, degrading interrogation, arbitrary arrest, abduction, and torture on a systematic level”, she said, calling on “all warring parties to stop all targeted forms of violence and abuse.”
