Sudan’s paramilitary forces killed at least 10 people on Thursday (April 2, 2026) in a drone attack that hit a hospital in the south-central part of the country, said a medical group.

Doctors Without Borders, also known as MSF, said the Sudanese paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) launched two drone strikes on Al-Jabalain Hospital in the White Nile province, hitting an operating theatre and a maternity ward.

The strikes, the latest in an intensifying drone war between the army and the RSF, killed 10 people, including seven medical staffers, and injured at least 19 people. Those injured were transferred to a hospital in Kosti, which is around 50 miles (80 kilometres) away, said MSF.

The strikes are the latest in a series of attacks on the health care system in Sudan that continues to be hit hard during the ongoing war between the army and the RSF that broke out in April 2023. The World Health Organisation said in March that over 200 attacks have targeted health care since the war began. Most recently, 70 people were killed, including at least 13 children, in a strike on a hospital in Sudan’s western Darfur region last month.

Also read: At least 64 killed in attack on Sudan healthcare facility, says WHO

The nearly three-year conflict in Sudan killed more than 40,000 people, according to U.N. figures, but aid groups say the true number could be much higher.

“The attack is even more appalling as it occurred during a children’s immunisation campaign,” the MSF said of the strike on the al-Jabalain hospital.

Meanwhile, Emergency Lawyers, a local rights group, said on Thursday (April 2, 2026) that the attacks also targeted a medical supply depot in Rabak, the capital city of the White Nile province.

The Emergency Lawyers said the “recurring pattern” of drone attacks by the warring parties since March in the provinces of South Kordofan, Blue Nile, East, Central and South Darfur displaced more people.

On Friday (April 3, 2026), Khalid Aleisir, the minister of culture, information, antiquities and tourism, condemned the attack and called for designating the RSF a terrorist organisation and prosecuting its members.

“We also hold regional backers directly responsible for perpetuating this violent campaign through military and logistical support, including advanced weaponry and unmanned aerial systems, which have escalated violence and targeted civilians,” he wrote on X.

Sudan Doctors Network, a local group that monitors war violence, called the attack a “deliberate assault on health facilities and unarmed civilians” that further worsens an already deteriorating health sector in the country.

“MSF is outraged by these repeated attacks on health care, which have escalated dangerously in recent weeks,” said Esperanza Santos, MSF head of emergencies for Sudan, in the group’s statement on Thursday (April 2, 2026). “Health facilities, medical staff, and patients must always be protected. We call on RSF and SAF to immediately stop this spiral of violence against medical facilities.”

A surge in drone strikes in the Sudanese region of Kordofan has taken a growing toll on civilians and hampered aid operations, analysts and humanitarian workers previously said.

A strike on a healthcare facility in Sudan has killed 64 people and wounded 89 more, the World Health Organization reported on Saturday (March 21, 2026).

The UN’s humanitarian office in Sudan had earlier said it was “appalled by the attack on a hospital in East Darfur yesterday, reportedly killing dozens, including children, and injuring more”.

The head of the World Health Organization said on Saturday that 13 children were among 64 people killed in a strike on a hospital in Sudan.

“WHO has verified yet another attack on health care in Sudan. This time, El-Daein Teaching Hospital in East Darfur’s capital, El-Daein, was struck, killing at least 64 people, including 13 children, two female nurses, one male doctor, and multiple patients,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on X

Sudanese rights group the Emergency Lawyers, who document atrocities in the war between Sudan’s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, reported it was an army drone strike that hit the El-Daein Teaching Hospital.

The RSF dominates the vast western Darfur region, while the army is in control of Sudan’s east, centre and north.

The WHO’s Surveillance System for Attacks marked Friday’s (March 20, 2026) incident as “confirmed” but did not give an exact location.

The attack involved “violence with heavy weapons” and affected a secondary health care facility, medical personnel, patients, supplies and storage, the record showed.

Though the WHO counts and verifies attacks on health care, it does not attribute blame as it is not an investigative agency.

El-Daein, the RSF-controlled state capital of East Darfur, has been regularly attacked by the army, which is trying to push the paramilitary back towards its Darfur strongholds and away from Sudan’s central corridor.

Its most recent strike on the city’s market earlier this month set fire to oil barrels that burned for hours.

Near-daily drone strikes are now a hallmark of Sudan’s brutal war, killing dozens at a time, mostly in the southern Kordofan region.

UN rights chief Volker Turk this month said he was “appalled” after more than 200 civilians were reported killed by drone attacks within an eight-day period.

“Parties to the conflict in Sudan continue to use increasingly powerful drones to deploy explosive weapons with wide-area impacts in populated areas,” he said.

To the repeated condemnation of the UN, hospitals have been a regular target throughout the war.

By December, more than 1,800 people had been killed in attacks on health facilities since the start of the war, including 173 health workers, according to the United Nations.

This year, a total of 12 attacks on health care in Sudan have been recorded, causing 178 deaths and 237 injuries.

Across the country, the war has killed tens of thousands and driven more than 11 million people from their homes.

It has fuelled what the UN describes as the world’s largest displacement and hunger crises, with more 33 million people in need of humanitarian aid.

Sudan’s military said on Monday (January 26, 2026) it has broken a siege imposed by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces on a key town in the central Kordofan region during the country’s civil war.

In a statement, the military said it had opened a route leading to Dilling town in South Kordofan province, which the RSF for months has attempted to control. Holding the town means control over major supply lines.

“Our forces inflicted heavy losses on the enemy, both personal and equipment,” the statement said.

There was no immediate comment from the RSF, which has been at war with the military for nearly three years.

Sudan plunged into chaos in April 2023 when a power struggle between the military and the RSF exploded into open fighting in the capital, Khartoum, and elsewhere. The war has killed more than 40,000 people, according to U.N. figures, but aid groups say the true number could be many times higher.

The fighting has created the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, with over 14 million people forced to flee their homes. Parts of the country have been pushed into famine.

Dilling has reportedly experienced severe hunger, but the world’s leading authority on food security, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, didn’t declare famine there in its November report because of a lack of data.

After being forced out of Khartoum in 2025, the paramilitary group has focused on Kordofan and the city of el-Fasher, which was the military’s last stronghold in the sprawling Darfur region until the RSF seized it in October.

A paramilitary drone attack on the army-held town of Kalogi in Sudan’s South Kordofan state hit a kindergarten and a hospital, killing dozens of civilians, a local official told AFP on Sunday (December 7, 2025).

The attack, which took place on Thursday (December 4), involved three strikes, “first a kindergarten, then a hospital and a third time as people tried to rescue the children”, Essam al-Din al-Sayed, head of the Kalogi administrative unit, told AFP using a Starlink connection.

He blamed the assault on the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and their ally, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North faction led by Abdelaziz al-Hilu.

Since April 2023, the Army and the paramilitary RSF have been locked in a conflict that has killed tens of thousands and displaced nearly 12 million.

Independent verification of reports from the Kordofan region remains difficult due to spotty communications, restricted access and ongoing insecurity.

The UN children’s agency said the attack killed more than 10 children aged between five and seven, while the Army-aligned Foreign Ministry put the overall death toll at 79, including 43 children.

“Killing children in their school is a horrific violation of children’s rights,” said UNICEF Representative for Sudan Sheldon Yett, urging all sides to halt their attacks and allow humanitarian access.

Following their late-October capture of El-Fasher — the Army’s last stronghold in western Sudan — the RSF has pushed eastward into the oil-rich Kordofan region, which is divided into three states.

More than 40,000 people have fled the region in the past month, according to the UN.

Analysts say the paramilitary offensive aims to break the army’s final defensive arc around central Sudan and set the stage for attempts to retake major cities, including the capital Khartoum.

Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) said on Monday (December 1, 2025) that it seized full control of Babanusa, a transport junction in the country’s oil-producing south, though its rival, the Sudanese army, disputed the claim.

In a statement on Monday (December 1), the RSF said its “liberation” of Babanusa in West Kordofan state — the latest frontline in the war in Sudan — came as it repelled “a surprise attack” by the Sudanese army in what it called “a clear violation of the humanitarian truce.”

On Tuesday (December 2), the army denied that the RSF had taken the entire town, and accused its rivals of continuing attacks on Babanusa despite RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo’s announcement of a unilateral ceasefire.

In a statement, the army said RSF fighters had launched daily artillery and drone strikes on the town and that troops had repelled a new assault on Monday (December 1).

Reuters was not immediately able to verify the claims by the rival forces.

The army dismissed the ceasefire declaration as a political tactic aimed at masking RSF movements and alleged foreign support.

On November 19, U.S. President Donald Trump said he would intervene to stop the conflict, which erupted from a power struggle in April 2023.

The United States, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Saudi Arabia – known as the Quad – earlier in November proposed a plan for a three-month truce followed by peace talks. The RSF responded by saying it had accepted the plan, but soon after attacked army territory with a barrage of drone strikes.

The RSF’s assault on Babanusa builds on the group’s momentum after it took al-Fashir, the army’s last holdout in Darfur, in October.

‘Women and girls are being raped, people being mutilated and killed — with utter impunity,’ said Tom Fletcher, the UN’s top relief official, late last month about the takeover of El-Fasher, in Sudan’s Darfur, by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). After a 500-day-long battle, the RSF moved house to house in El Fasher targeting civilians. The city, already gripped by hunger, “has descended into an even darker hell,” Mr. Fletcher told the Security Council on October 30.

The plight of Darfur is only a slice of the tragedy of Sudan, which plunged into a deadly civil war between the Army and the RSF in April 2023. More than 12 million people are estimated to have been displaced. More than 61,000 people are estimated to have been killed. While both sides are accused of committing atrocities, the RSF, commanded by Mohamed Hamdan Dagolo, was particularly blamed by rights organisations for its genocidal campaigns.

The RSF’s roots go back to the notorious Janjaweed (literally, Spirit of the Horse), an Arab supremacist militia which was once backed by former Libyan leader Mohammer Qaddafi. When Sudan fell into a civil war in the 1990s, the regime of Omar al-Bashir backed Janjaweed, who unleashed brutal violence in Darfur. They beat back the rebels but were accused of carrying out genocidal acts against the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa peoples of the region — all African communities. This period also saw the rise of Mr. Dagolo (popularly known as Hemedti, or Little Mohamed) through the ranks of the Janjaweed. When Mr. Bashir decided to form the RSF in 2013, he picked Hemedti as its commander.

Within years, with Hemedti’s quick rise as a confidant of Mr. Bashir, the RSF came directly under the President’s command. Despite calls for its integration with the regular Army, the RSF remained autonomous. In the following years, the RSF acted as Mr. Bashir’s feared private army. It faced allegations of torture, rape and mass killings.

When mass protests shook Sudan in 2019, Mr. Bashir turned to the RSF once again. In June, Hemedti’s forces attacked peaceful protesters in Khartoum. Hundreds were killed. Bodies turned up in the Nile. But even the RSF could not quell the revolutionary spirit of the protesters. When the Army and the RSF realised that continuing agitations threatened to take away the privileges they enjoyed under the regime Mr. Bashir built, they decided to sacrifice the head of the regime to protect themselves.

Mr. Bashir was ousted from power. For Hemedti, it was an opportunity to formalise his influence in Sudan. For years, he was a warlord commanding a paramilitary force. Now, he became Number 2 in the transition government.

Two Generals

The Army, commanded by Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the RSF, stood hand in hand in halting Sudan’s transition to democracy in 2021. But the internal contradictions came to the surface once the Army seized power. Gen. Burhan, wary of Hemedti’s ambitions, wanted to integrate the RSF into the regular Sudanese Army. The militia wanted a 10-year timeline for integration, while the military government insisted it happen in two years. As a power struggle broke out between the Generals, the RSF was deployed in Khartoum, the capital, on April 11, 2023. Fighting erupted soon after, plunging the whole country into a prolonged civil war.

Today, the Sudanese Army controls most of the country, including Khartoum, and Port Sudan, the Red Sea city which is the de facto capital. The RSF’s stronghold is Darfur. With the fall of El Fasher in October, the Sudanese Army lost its last major territory in Darfur to the RSF.

The Sudanese government says the RSF gets backing from foreign powers, especially the UAE and the UAE-aligned factions in Libya. Egypt is believed to be backing the Army. The RSF has also formed a parallel government, which raised fears that the country could be fragmented further. As both sides dig in their heels, a lasting solution to Sudan’s conflict remains elusive.