GENEVA: The death toll from a strike on a hospital in East Darfur has risen to 70, the WHO said on Tuesday, calling the hit an attack on survival in Sudan’s devastating war.

The World Health Organisation said the number of people injured in Friday’s strike on the El-Daein Teaching Hospital in the state capital of East Darfur had also increased from 89 to 146, with the facility now out of action.

Hala Khudari, the deputy WHO representative in Sudan and the UN agency’s health emergency lead in the country, called it an “atrocious attack”. She said the death toll included seven women and 13 children, one doctor and two nurses, while those injured included patients, their family members and eight health workers.

“The hospital sustained severe damage, particularly to the outpatient and emergency departments,” she told a press briefing in Geneva, speaking from Port Sudan.

Over 500 civilians killed in drone strikes this year, says UN

“This hospital had already been damaged in a previous attack in August 2024. Since this latest attack, the hospital is no longer functional.” The facility served as a referral hospital for more than two million people across El-Daein city and nine localities in East Darfur state. Patients may now need to travel 160 kilometres (around 100 miles) to reach the next referral hospital, said Khudari.

“An attack on a hospital is not only an attack on a building. It is an attack on people seeking care, on health workers risking their lives to save others, and on the very possibility of survival in times of crisis,” she said. “Access to care is shrinking. And efforts to repair or restore damaged facilities and equipment are being undermined.” Khudari said the WHO’s Sudan health response for 2026 was currently only 5.7 percent funded.

Since erupting in April 2023, the conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has killed tens of thousands and forced 11 million people to flee their homes.

Sudanese rights group Emergency Lawyers reported that the hospital was hit by an army drone strike.

The RSF dominates the vast Darfur region in western Sudan, while Sudan’s army is in control of the east, centre and north.

RSF-controlled El-Daein has been regularly attacked by the Sudanese army, which is trying to push the paramilitaries back towards its Darfur strongholds and away from Sudan’s central corridor.

Drone strikes

More than 500 civilians were killed in drone strikes in Sudan between January and mid-March, with the vast majority killed in the strategic Kordofan region, the United Nations said on Tuesday.

The UN rights office said it had noted a sharp increase in the use of drones in Sudan’s civil war, underlining “the devastating impact of high-tech and relatively cheap weapons in populated areas”.

“According to information received, over 500 civilians were killed in such strikes from January 1 to March 15,” spokeswoman Marta Hurtado told reporters in Geneva, highlighting that “the vast majority of these civilian deaths were documented in three states in the Kordofan region”.

Sudan’s southern Kordofan region is currently the fiercest battlefield in the three-year war between the regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.

The vast region connects RSF strongholds in the western Darfur region with the army-controlled east.

Near-daily drone strikes have killed dozens at a time across the region, where the army has sought to stem an RSF advance, pushing the paramilitaries back towards Darfur and away from the capital Khartoum.

“In the first two weeks of March alone, information received shows that over 277 civilians were killed, over three-quarters of whom were killed in drone strikes,” Hurtado said. She said that the “deadly attacks have continued in the past week, as the holy month of Ramazan came to a close”.

Hunger and displacement crises

“Widening drone attacks are spilling across Sudan’s borders, with serious risk of further escalation carrying regional consequences,” Hurtado warned, referring to drone strikes on the Chadian border after an earlier RSF ground offensive.

According to the rights office, a drone strike on the Chadian town of Tine on March 18 killed at least 24 civilians and wounded some 60 others. Across Sudan, the war has killed tens of thousands of people and left some 11 million displaced, creating the world’s largest hunger and displacement crises.

“We urge all states, particularly those with influence, to do all in their power to end arms transfers that are fuelling the conflict and being used in manifest disregard of the obligation to protect civilians in conflict,” Hurtado said.

“There needs to be renewed diplomatic efforts towards an urgent ceasefire to bring the conflict to an end,” she said.

Published in Dawn, March 25th, 2026