GENEVA: The World Health Organization voiced alarm Thursday at recent attacks in Sudan’s war-ravaged Darfur region, which it said had killed dozens of people and injured many more.
“The most recent attacks in Kabkabiya, North Darfur, that claimed at least 80 lives and injured hundreds of people are shocking,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on X, adding “our sympathies go out to the affected communities in Sudan.”
The pro-democracy Emergency Lawyers group had given an even higher toll from Monday’s strike on Kabkabiya, a town about 180 kilometers (112 miles) west of El-Fasher, the state capital that has been under siege by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) since May.
The lawyers group, which has been documenting human rights abuses during the conflict, said an air strike “took place on the town’s weekly market day, where residents from various nearby villages had gathered to shop, resulting in the death of more than 100 people and injury of hundreds, including women and children.”
They were among at least 176 people killed in two days of army and paramilitary strikes across Sudan this week, according to an AFP tally of tolls provided by officials, activists and lawyers.
Both the army and the RSF, who have been at war since April 2023, have been accused of indiscriminately targeting civilians and deliberately bombing residential areas.
Sudan’s civil war has killed tens of thousands of people and uprooted 12 million.
Nearly nine million of those are displaced within Sudan, most in areas with devastated infrastructure and facing the threat of mass starvation.
Across the country, nearly 26 million people — around half the population — are facing acute hunger, according to the United Nations.
Darfur, a region the size of France, is home to around a quarter of Sudan’s population but more than half its displaced people.
Nearly all of it is now controlled by the RSF, which has also taken over swathes of the southern Kordofan region and central Sudan, while the army holds the country’s north and east.
Tedros warned Thursday that “health facilities in Darfur are barely managing to meet health needs with non-functional equipment and limitations of medical supplies.”
The UN health agency, he said, had “managed to deliver trauma and surgery supplies earlier this month, which can help to treat the injured and prevent further loss of life.”