BBC Investigation Finds Sudan's RSF Systematically Destroyed el-Fasher's Hospitals

A BBC investigation has found evidence that Sudanese paramilitary fighters systematically destroyed el-Fasher's healthcare system during their long siege of the Darfur city and their subsequent takeover of it a year ago.

The UN human rights chief, Volker Türk, says the multiple attacks on hospitals may amount to war crimes. Doctors who were in the city described the targeting to the BBC directly.

The distinction the investigation draws is between hospitals damaged because fighting happened near them and hospitals destroyed because they were hospitals. The first is a consequence of urban war. The second is a method — one that removes a besieged population's ability to survive the siege, and that is prohibited under the laws of armed conflict precisely because it works.

The war next door

Sudan shares a long border with Ethiopia, and what happens in Darfur does not stay in Darfur.

The practical channels are well established by now: displacement across the eastern border, disrupted overland trade routes, pressure on Port Sudan as a corridor, and a regional risk premium that shows up in insurance, financing terms and investor appetite for the whole Horn. Ethiopian firms trading north have been routing around the Sudanese conflict for two years.

A finding of systematic attacks on medical facilities also changes the diplomatic arithmetic. War crimes findings constrain which governments can be seen dealing with the RSF, and that reshapes the alignments every state in the region — Ethiopia included — has to navigate.

Open

The RSF has not responded to the BBC's findings. No international investigative body has yet opened a formal proceeding on the el-Fasher hospital attacks specifically, and the civilian death toll from the siege and takeover remains unestablished.

Sources: BBC News, 23 October 2026, BBC News, 23 October 2026