As fighters from the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary closed in on government positions in the besieged Sudanese city of al-Fashir in October, a skeleton crew from the city’s last functioning hospital treated a surge of wounded in a makeshift emergency room.

Shells pounded the area around Saudi Hospital, hitting civilians and combatants. It felt like “doomsday,” said one nurse. Her scrubs became soaked with blood as patients streamed in.

Staff wrapped wounds and broken limbs in mosquito netting, having run out of gauze and tourniquets.

“We had to jump over the dead bodies to get to the patients,” the nurse said. “We couldn’t bury them because the drones were overhead.”

On October 27, RSF fighters brought in Abdallah Yousif, a trader they had abducted on the road.

Yousif told Reuters he saw bodies scattered throughout the compound, children, women, elderly people and patients who had been too sick to flee.

He said he watched RSF fighters taking people from the hospital. Some were held for ransom, others killed.

“They took the young men and killed them in the road,” Yousif said.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) reported that shelling of the Saudi Hospital killed one nurse and injured three other health workers on October 26. In a separate attack, on October 28, the WHO said, more than 460 patients and their companions were shot and killed there.

Reuters was unable to confirm the date or death toll.

Satellite imagery from October 28 reveals signs of mass killings at Saudi Hospital.

The images show clusters of human-sized objects, according to an analysis by the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab.

–Reuters–