LONDON: Two medical volunteers were seized from an ambulance driving in northern Khartoum and detained for days by Sudanese army forces, The Guardian reported on Tuesday.
Mohamed Ahmed and Mohamed Jamal went missing last week while helping to reopen the Haj Al-Safi Hospital in Bahri. The hospital had been closed due to intense combat between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.
The families of the missing volunteers knew nothing about their disappearance until Sunday, when army intelligence published a statement saying that they were captured while operating a “stolen” ambulance, The Guardian reported.
However, activists denied these allegations, saying the two men were part of a volunteer effort to reopen the city’s hospitals.
Ahmed and Jamal were released on Monday after their captors shaved their heads in an apparent attempt to humiliate them, The Guardian reported.
Dr. Attia Abdallah, a spokesperson for the Sudan doctors’ syndicate, told the newspaper: “These two young men have been working with us for two weeks to reopen the hospitals. They should not have been rewarded by being arrested and accused of things that they have done.
“This is a way of pulling the civil forces to the war and take them from their duties.”
Some 80 percent of Khartoum’s hospitals have either closed or are unable to fully operate.
The World Health Organization and the International Committee of the Red Cross say that Sudan’s healthcare system could implode.
Civil resistance organizations in the country have played a crucial role in taking medicines to those caught up in the war, in the absence of a functioning government.
The military has sent death threats to the few remaining doctors still able to work, The Guardian reported.
Dr. Hiba Omer, the first president of Sudan’s medical union, was forced to go into hiding after receiving a series of WhatsApp messages accusing her of collaborating with the RSF.
She told The Guardian: “We keep receiving all sorts of threats; some people even came to the hospital.
“These people love death, blood and ugliness. They cannot stand seeing candle lighting for others.
“We are trying our best to save lives and to create a new dawn, but they hate that.
“The majority of those we receive are military personnel, both from the RSF and the army. We do not care who is who — we just treat whoever needs our help.
“We work under enormous pressure, basically living inside the hospital with very limited staff and limited medical equipment.”
