Sudan! Escaping el-Fasher. Groups of gunmen who reportedly killed at least 460 people at a hospital in Sudan attacked in several waves, Sudan mourns 51 youths drowned in attempt to reach Greece

Groups of gunmen who reportedly killed at least 460 people at a hospital in Sudan attacked in several waves, abducting doctors and nurses, then gunning down staff, patients and people sheltering there, the World Health Organization said Friday.

The attack Tuesday in the country’s Darfur region was part of a reported rampage by the Rapid Support Forces, a powerful paramilitary group, as it captured the key city of el-Fasher after besieging it for 18 months. Witnesses have reported fighters going house-to-house, killing civilians and committing sexual assaults.

Many details of the hospital attack and other violence in the city have been slow to emerge, and the total death toll remains unknown.

The fall of el-Fasher heralds a new phase of the brutal, two-year war between the RSF and the military in Africa’s third-largest country.

The war has killed more than 40,000 people, according to U.N. figures, but aid groups say that is an undercount and the true number could be many times higher. The war has displaced more than 14 million people and fueled outbreaks of diseases believed to have killed thousands. Famine has been declared in parts of Darfur, a region the size of Spain, and other parts of the country.

Escaping el-Fasher

Communications are down in el-Fasher, located deep in a semi-desert region some 800 kilometers (500 miles) southwest of Khartoum, the capital. Aid groups that had been operating there have largely been forced out.

Some survivors have staggered into a refugee camp about 40 miles away in the town of Tawila.

More than 62,000 people are believed to have fled el-Fasher between Sunday and Wednesday, the U.N. migration agency said. But far fewer have made it to Tawila. The Norwegian Refugee Council, which manages the camp, put the number at around 5,000 people, raising fears over the fate of tens of thousands.

Fatima Abdulrahim, 70, fled el-Fasher with her grandchildren a few days before it was captured to escape the siege. She described to The Associated Press a harrowing five-day journey to reach Tawila, hiding in trenches, dodging bullets and gunmen behind walls and empty buildings.

“We ran on the streets, hiding for ten minutes behind the berm, then charging out, running until we made it out,” she said, adding that she kept falling and getting up amid gunfire and shelling. Her companions carried her at times, she said.

“Thirst almost killed us,” she said, describing picking grass to eat from the side of the road.

Along the way, she said she also witnessed militiamen shoot and kill young men trying to bring food into the city.

“The people dead on the streets were countless,” she said. “I kept covering the eyes of the little ones so they don’t see. Some were injured and beaten and could not move. We pulled some to the paved road, hoping a car would come and take them.”

She said some fighters stopped her, and the group she was traveling with, and took all their belongings and beat the children.

At least 450 people have been admitted to the hospital in Tawila, some suffering from severe malnutrition and sexual violence, said Adam Rojal, spokesperson for a local group that works with displaced people in Darfur.

The Norwegian Refugee Council said people were arriving at the camp with broken limbs and other wounds, and some with injuries sustained months ago. Many children arrived at the camp who had lost their parents in the fighting.

Of the 70 children younger than 5 that arrived in Tawila on Monday, 40 were severely malnourished, according to Doctors Without Borders.

Sudan has been shocked and saddened by reports on Saturday that 51 Sudanese youths drowned while trying to reach the Greece across the Mediterranean, in one of the most painful recent disasters associated with migration. The exact details of the tragedy are still unclear; however, thousands of Sudanese are among the migrants who attempt to cross from Libya to Europe using small and often unseaworthy vessels, with more than 4,000 Sudanese citizens registered by the UNHCR as arriving in Greece by sea in 2025.

A relative of a number of victims told Radio Dabanga that most of the victims hail from the areas of El Usaylat, Dbeibeh, El Ilfon, Kassala, and Omdurman, where the list included many names of well-known families and families in those areas, which doubled the size of the tragedy and its great social impact.

Malik Dejaoui, head of the Organisation for Combating Illegal Migration and Voluntary Return, told Radio Dabanga that the tragedy represents a new link in the “chain of tragedies associated with illegal migration and human trafficking”, blaming smuggling networks that “exploit young people’s ambitions and dreams of reaching Europe through death-threatening routes”.

The Libyan city of Tobruk is the closest starting point for migrants’ sea journeys to reach Greece, he said, stressing that the organization has repeatedly warned of the danger of these routes, but “there is no life for those who are calling.”

Dejoui reiterated his call to the youth and their families to voluntarily return to stable areas inside Sudan, instead of being dragged into the illusions of smugglers, while at the same time sending an urgent message to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Expatriates Service on the need to urgently intervene and develop more effective policies to curb this phenomenon.

The latest tragedy, according to observers, opens the door once again to serious questions about the reasons why Sudanese youth continue to die at sea, at a time when the country needs their energies to build the interior.

Attempts to reach Europe

According to figures by the UN refugee agency UNHCR on September 14, a total of 28,000 refugees have arrived in Greece by sea thus far in 2025. The UNHCR further shows that effective July 31, Sudanese constituted more than 4,000 sea arrivals in the Hellenic Republic.