A south Khartoum hospital suspended operations after armed members of the so-called Joint Force threatened medical staff while bringing in a wounded colleague, a medical source said on Sunday.
Bashair Hospital, in the capital’s south, stopped work on Friday night following the incident, the source told Darfur24. Services briefly resumed on Saturday afternoon after intervention by the health ministry’s director of curative medicine, then ceased entirely. An eyewitness said the emergency department was shut on Sunday.
The confrontation began late Friday when Joint Force personnel arrived with an injured comrade and entered the facility brandishing weapons. One member carrying a Kalashnikov threatened to kill staff if the patient died, the medical source said. A second joint-force unit tried to defuse the situation without success before SAF troops arrived and ended the standoff.
The hospital workforce then chose to halt services and demanded a permanent security presence to protect the facility. The wounded patient was stabilized and transferred to the Military Medical Corps Hospital.
Bashair Hospital, supported by Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), has faced repeated assaults, particularly during periods when the Rapid Support Forces held much of Khartoum, according to local accounts.
