The death toll from a strike on a hospital in East Darfur has risen from 64 to 70, the WHO said Tuesday, calling the hit an attack on survival in Sudan's devastating war.
The World Health Organization said the number of people injured in Friday's strike on the El-Daein Teaching Hospital in the state capital of East Darfur had also increased from 89 to 146, with the facility now out of action.
Hala Khudari, the deputy WHO representative in Sudan and the UN agency's health emergency lead in the country, called it an "atrocious attack".
She said the death toll included seven women and 13 children, one doctor and two nurses, while those injured included patients, their family members and eight health workers.
"The hospital sustained severe damage, particularly to the outpatient and emergency departments," she told a press briefing in Geneva, speaking from Port Sudan.
"This hospital had already been damaged in a previous attack in August 2024. Since this latest attack, the hospital is no longer functional."
The facility served as a referral hospital for more than two million people across El-Daein city and nine localities in East Darfur state. Patients may now need to travel 160 kilometres (around 100 miles) to reach the next referral hospital, said Khudari.
"An attack on a hospital is not only an attack on a building. It is an attack on people seeking care, on health workers risking their lives to save others, and on the very possibility of survival in times of crisis," she said.
"Access to care is shrinking. And efforts to repair or restore damaged facilities and equipment are being undermined."
Khudari said the WHO's Sudan health response for 2026 was currently only 5.7 percent funded.
Since erupting in April 2023, the conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has killed tens of thousands and forced 11 million people to flee their homes.
Sudanese rights group Emergency Lawyers reported that the hospital was hit by an army drone strike.
The RSF dominates the vast Darfur region in western Sudan, while Sudan's army is in control of the east, centre and north.
RSF-controlled El-Daein has been regularly attacked by the Sudanese army, which is trying to push the paramilitaries back towards its Darfur strongholds and away from Sudan's central corridor.
