GENEVA/PORT SUDAN: More than 100 people, including dozens of children, were killed in attacks on a kindergarten in Sudan that continued even as parents and caretakers rushed the wounded to a nearby hospital, the World Health Organization said on Monday.

Health facilities in Sudan have repeatedly come under attack near the frontlines of the country’s 2-1/2-year civil war. A massacre also occurred in October in the city of al-Fashir, Reuters reported.

The latest attacks on December 4 began with repeated strikes on a kindergarten in South Kordofan state, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on X. “Disturbingly, paramedics and responders came under attack as they tried to move the injured from the kindergarten to the hospital,” he said.

Sudan’s Foreign Ministry condemned the attacks that it said were carried out by the Rapid Support Forces using drones.

Paramilitary forces seize key oil field in the south

The WHO database said heavy weapons were used and that 114 people, including 63 children, were killed and 35 wounded.

Oil field seized

The Rapid Support Forces seized Sudan’s largest oil field on Monday, paramilitary, army, and industry sources said, as the country’s warring parties wrestle for control of the strategic, resource-rich Kordofan region.

Since the paramilitary RSF dislodged the army from its last holdout in Darfur at the end of October, the focus of the fighting has shifted to neighbouring Kordofan, where strikes on a kindergarten and hospital last week killed scores of children, according to the WHO.

“The liberation of the Heglig oil region is a pivotal point in the liberation of the entire homeland, given the region’s economic importance,” the RSF said in a statement on Monday.

An RSF source said the base that housed the local army division had also been captured.

An engineer at the Heglig field, in the far south of Kordofan, confirmed the RSF’s takeover of the facility, telling AFP the team had “shut it down and halted production, and the workers were evacuated to South Sudan”.

Army forces withdrew from the area “to protect the oil facilities and prevent damage”, a military source said.

The three sources spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak to the media.

Since April 2023, the RSF has been waging a war with the regular army that has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced 12 million more, and decimated the country’s already fragile infrastructure.

Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus condemned the “senseless” strikes, which local authorities and the army-aligned foreign ministry blamed on the RSF.

“Disturbingly, paramedics and responders came under attack as they tried to move the injured from the kindergarten to the hospital,” Ghebreyesus wrote on X.

Oil revenue ‘disaster’

The Heglig field is the country’s largest, and is also the main processing facility for South Sudan’s oil exports, which make up nearly all of Juba’s government revenue.

“The processing plant near the field through which South Sudanese oil passes was also shut down,” the engineer said.

The pipeline that carries South Sudanese oil from the southern border to Port Sudan on the Red Sea is also a key source of income for impoverished Sudan, which has seen its economy crumble during the war.

When Juba seceded in 2011, it took nearly all of Sudan’s oil deposits with it. Heglig was disputed between the two countries and the site of brief clashes in 2012.

In addition to Heglig, the RSF also controls key oil fields in the west operated since the 1990s by China before being forced shut early in the war.

Last month, the Chinese National Petroleum Corporation informed the Sudanese government it intended to end its investments, according to a copy of the letter.

Former oil minister Gadein Ali Obeid described the situation as a “disaster” for Sudan.

The country has now “lost its two main oil-producing regions, Heglig and Block 6”, he said, referring to the Chinese-operated site further west.

“All of Sudan’s oil production originates from both of them... Even oil from Block 6 was processed at Heglig, which used to handle between 80,000 and 100,000 barrels per day for Sudan and South Sudan,” he added.

Since losing their last toehold in western Darfur, the army has been on the defensive, trying to halt the paramilitary advance through Kordofan and back towards the capital Khartoum.

Sudan is now effectively split in two, with the army holding the north, east and centre, and the RSF in control of the west and, with the help of its allies, swathes of the south.

Published in Dawn, December 9th, 2025