The Al Daein Teaching Hospital is the largest medical facility in East Darfur, a region of roughly 600,000 people that has been contested between Sudan's military and the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group since fighting erupted across the country in April 2023. On Friday, March 21, the hospital was struck. At least 64 people were killed, including at least 13 children and one doctor and two nurses who were on duty. The pediatric, maternity, and emergency departments were destroyed. As of Monday, the hospital is nonfunctional.
The World Health Organization confirmed the toll Saturday. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus posted on X: "As a result of this tragedy, the total number of fatalities linked to attacks on health facilities during Sudan's war has now surpassed 2,000." He added a figure that deserves to be read twice: of the 2,036 people killed in 213 confirmed healthcare attacks since the war began, 1,620 died in 2025 alone. That is 82 percent of the entire war's healthcare-facility death toll concentrated in a single calendar year.
The RSF blamed Sudan's military for the strike. The army denied it. Sudanese rights group Emergency Lawyers reported it was a military drone strike. Two Sudanese military officials told the Associated Press that the strike had been aimed at a police station in the area and that the hospital was hit in error — an account that, if true, would still constitute a serious violation of international humanitarian law requiring parties to a conflict to verify civilian targets before striking. Sudan's military has not officially acknowledged the strike.
“Sudanese rights group Emergency Lawyers reported it was a military drone strike.”
The broader context makes attribution important but somewhat secondary to the scale of what is happening to Sudan's healthcare system. Before the war, Sudan had roughly 12,000 doctors for a population of 48 million — one of the lowest ratios in Africa. The WHO has verified that at least 80 percent of health facilities in conflict-affected areas are now either destroyed, looted, or closed due to staff displacement. In East Darfur, the Al Daein hospital was the primary referral facility for trauma, obstetric emergencies, and pediatric intensive care across a territory roughly the size of West Virginia. Its destruction means that for the foreseeable future, patients requiring those services have nowhere to go.
Wichtige Erkenntnisse
- sudan-war: The RSF blamed Sudan's military, the army denied responsibility.
- darfur: The RSF blamed Sudan's military, the army denied responsibility.
- hospital-attack: The RSF blamed Sudan's military, the army denied responsibility.
- who: The RSF blamed Sudan's military, the army denied responsibility.
The war itself has killed more than 40,000 people according to UN estimates, though the actual number is likely higher — the most remote areas of Darfur and Kordofan have no systematic body counting. Between 8 and 10 million people have been displaced, making this the world's largest internal displacement crisis. Famine conditions have been confirmed in five areas of Sudan by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, a UN-backed global monitoring body. The 2024 and 2025 harvest seasons were severely disrupted by fighting.
What is striking about Sudan's war — in the context of a news cycle dominated by Iran, Ukraine, and a dramatic crash at LaGuardia — is how systematically it has been under-covered relative to its humanitarian scale. The Iran conflict, with its oil market implications and nuclear dimensions, commands urgent global attention. The Sudan war, which has killed more people and displaced more families than any other current conflict on earth, often appears as a paragraph at the bottom of international roundups.
Part of the reason is access. International journalists face significant obstacles operating in both RSF and Sudanese military-controlled areas. The absence of imagery — of the kind that makes a war emotionally legible to international audiences — means that even events like the Al Daein hospital strike, which in any other context would dominate front pages, arrives as a secondhand WHO confirmation.
Ghebreyesus ended his Saturday statement with a line that will not likely be remembered the way the IEA's oil warnings were: "Enough blood has been spilled. Enough suffering has been inflicted. The time has come to de-escalate the conflict in Sudan." The problem is that both the RSF and Sudan's army believe they can still win.
