The World Health Organization’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, reported that three medical facilities in South Kordofan were attacked between 3 and 5 February, leaving 31 people dead and 19 wounded. The strikes, he said on social media, included women and children among the casualties and underscore the acute danger facing civilians and health workers as fighting intensifies in the region.
The violence comes amid a broader conflict between Sudan’s regular armed forces and the Rapid Support Forces, which has been ongoing since April 2023 and has spread beyond Khartoum to multiple states including Kordofan. The WHO statement noted that the assaults occurred in an area where the Rapid Support Forces and allied groups, including the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (North Bureau), have been fighting government forces, exacerbating an already dire humanitarian situation.
Attacks on hospitals are particularly consequential because they remove vital capacity for treating the wounded and for routine public-health functions such as maternal care and vaccination. Health facilities and personnel are afforded special protection under international humanitarian law; their repeated targeting not only raises legal and moral alarms but also accelerates indirect mortality from disease and lack of care, and complicates humanitarian access to civilians trapped by fighting.
The larger conflict has left a heavy toll: more than two years of intermittent and often intense combat have killed nearly 30,000 people and displaced large swathes of the population. In this context, the destruction or disabling of health infrastructure risks long-term collapse of services in contested states and increases the likelihood of outbreaks, malnutrition and protracted displacement.
Tedros’s appeal for an immediate cessation of hostilities and for the protection of civilians and medical services is consistent with repeated international calls, but the WHO has limited means to enforce such demands. The statement is nonetheless significant: it documents patterns of harm that aid agencies and courts can use to press for protection, access, and accountability, even as immediate humanitarian relief remains constrained by insecurity.
Absent a durable halt to fighting, South Kordofan’s health system and its civilian population face mounting danger. International diplomatic and humanitarian actors will need to combine pressure, secure humanitarian corridors, and robust documentation of violations if the repeated targeting of medical facilities is to be checked and longer-term recovery made possible.