A BBC investigation has found evidence that Sudan's paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) systematically destroyed the healthcare system of el-Fasher, the Darfur city they besieged and captured a year ago, in a campaign the UN's human rights chief says may amount to war crimes.

Source: BBC News

The investigation documents at least 43 separate attacks on hospitals and health sites between May 2024 and October 2025, and records that 55 medical workers were killed, 120 injured and 10 abducted or forcibly disappeared, according to the BBC's findings reported on Thursday.

UN human rights chief Volker Türk called the findings "deeply disturbing", saying multiple attacks by the RSF on civilian infrastructure, including health facilities, were serious violations of international humanitarian law and may amount to war crimes. The World Health Organization said el-Fasher represents "one of the clearest and most severe examples of the wider impact of the conflict on health care in Sudan."

Source: ADN News (UN statement)

Phone-light surgery and a hospital raid

At el-Fasher's Saudi Hospital, medics performed a Caesarean section by phone light on the day the hospital was bombed, the BBC reported. The investigation describes how the city's South Hospital, after becoming a main surgical hub, was repeatedly shelled and then raided by RSF fighters on 8 June; its director general, surgeon Izzeldin Ahmed Dawaud Asow, told the BBC he was beaten with rifle butts and survived by pretending to be dead, and returned to find patients' bodies and his operating-room equipment destroyed.

RSF rejects the findings

The RSF has rejected the investigation. Its health minister, Dr Alaa Eldin Nugud, described the allegations as propaganda and a deliberate attempt by the national army and its allies to smear the RSF's reputation. He insisted the South Hospital was being used as a military base, telling the BBC that missile launchers had been set up on its grounds and sharing video of weapons remains filmed more than a year after the hospital closed. The BBC said it found no independent evidence for that claim, doctors who worked in el-Fasher denied the hospital was incorporated into a military base, and the Darfur regional government categorically rejected the charges. Under international law, a hospital can lose its protection only if it is used to commit an "act harmful to the enemy".