French medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) reported on Sunday that a passenger was killed in what it condemned as a “despicable attack” on one of its ambulances in Sudan’s Darfur region.
El-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state, has been a battleground for months, with intense fighting between the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese army, alongside allied armed groups. Notably, it remains the only major city in Darfur that the RSF has not captured.
MSF is among the few international organisations still operating in the city, where repeated attacks on healthcare have forced nearly all medical facilities to close.
On Friday, an MSF ambulance was transporting a woman in labour from the Zamzam displacement camp to the Saudi Hospital in El-Fasher for an emergency surgical procedure. The Saudi Hospital is the last public facility in the area with surgical capacity, MSF noted.
The ambulance, clearly marked with the MSF logo and flag, came under fire from an “unknown gunman,” killing one of the patient’s caretakers, the organisation said in a statement.
This is the second time in less than a month that an MSF ambulance has been targeted in El-Fasher.
The broader healthcare crisis in Sudan continues to worsen. Frequent attacks on medical facilities and workers have left up to 80% of the country’s hospitals out of service, according to official figures.
On the same day as the attack, MSF announced it had suspended operations at Bashair Hospital in Khartoum, one of the last remaining facilities providing free medical care in the southern part of the capital.
Since the war erupted in April 2023, the conflict between the army and the RSF has claimed tens of thousands of lives, displaced over 12 million people, and pushed millions to the brink of starvation.
In the area around El-Fasher, famine has already taken hold in three displacement camps — Zamzam, Abu Shouk and Al-Salam — and is expected to expand to five more areas including the city itself by May, according to a UN-backed assessment.
