Sudan's Doctors Bear Brunt of War as Healthcare Falls Apart

(FILES) A Sudanese army soldier mans a machine gun on top of a military pickup truck outside a hospital in Omdurman - AFP
(FILES) A Sudanese army soldier mans a machine gun on top of a military pickup truck outside a hospital in Omdurman - AFP
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Sudan's Doctors Bear Brunt of War as Healthcare Falls Apart

(FILES) A Sudanese army soldier mans a machine gun on top of a military pickup truck outside a hospital in Omdurman - AFP
(FILES) A Sudanese army soldier mans a machine gun on top of a military pickup truck outside a hospital in Omdurman - AFP

Sudanese doctor Mohamed Moussa has grown so accustomed to the constant sound of gunfire and shelling near his hospital that it no longer startles him. Instead, he simply continues attending to his patients.

"The bombing has numbed us," the 30-year-old general practitioner told AFP by phone from Al-Nao hospital, one of the last functioning medical facilities in Omdurman, part of greater Khartoum.

Gunfire rattles in the distance, warplanes roar overhead and nearby shelling makes the ground tremble, more than a year and a half into a grinding war between rival Sudanese generals.

Embattled health workers "have no choice but to continue", said Moussa.
Since April 2023, Sudan has been torn apart by a war between army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, leader of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

The war has killed tens of thousands and uprooted 12 million people, creating what the International Rescue Committee aid group has called the "biggest humanitarian crisis ever recorded".

The violence has turned the country's hospitals into battlegrounds, placing health workers like Moussa on the frontlines.

Inside Al-Nao's overwhelmed wards, the conflict's toll is staggering.

Doctors say they tend to a harrowing array of injuries: gunshot wounds to the head, chest and abdomen, severe burns, shattered bones and amputations -- even among children as young as four months.

The hospital itself has not been spared.

Deadly shelling has repeatedly hit its premises, according to medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) which has supported the Al-Nao hospital.

Elsewhere, the situation is just as dire. In North Darfur, a recent drone attack killed nine at the state capital's main hospital, while shelling forced MSF to evacuate its field hospital in a famine-hit refugee camp.

- Medics targeted -

Sudan's healthcare system, already struggling before the war, has now all but crumbled.

Of the 87 hospitals in Khartoum state, nearly half suffered visible damage between the start of the war and August 26 this year, according to satellite imagery provided and analysed by Yale University's Humanitarian Research Lab and the Sudanese American Physicians Association.

As of October, the World Health Organization had documented 119 confirmed attacks on healthcare facilities across Sudan.

"There is a complete disregard for civilian protection," said Kyle McNally, MSF's humanitarian affairs advisor.

He told AFP that an ongoing "broad-spectrum attack on healthcare" includes "widespread physical destruction, which then reduces services to the floor -- literally and figuratively".

The national doctors' union estimates that in conflict zones across Sudan, up to 90 percent of medical facilities have been forced shut, leaving millions without access to essential care.

Both sides of the conflict have been implicated in attacks on healthcare facilities.

The medical union said that 78 health workers have been killed since the war began, by gunfire or shelling at their workplaces or homes.

"Both sides believe that medical staff are cooperating with the opposing faction, which leads to their targeting," union spokesperson Sayed Mohamed Abdullah told AFP.

"There is no justification for targeting hospitals or medical personnel. Doctors... make no distinction between one patient and another."

- Starvation -

According to the doctors' union, the RSF has raided hospitals to treat their wounded or search for enemies, while the army has conducted air strikes on medical facilities across the country.

On November 11, MSF suspended most activities at Bashair Hospital, one of South Khartoum's few functioning hospitals, after fighters stormed the facility and shot dead another fighter being treated there.

MSF officials say they believe the fighters to be RSF combatants.

In addition to the endless stream of war casualties, Sudan's doctors scramble to respond to another threat: mass starvation.

In a paediatric hospital in Omdurman, across the Nile from Khartoum, malnourished children arrive in droves.

Between mid-August and late October, the small hospital was receiving up to 40 children a day, many in critical condition, according to one doctor.

"Every day, three or four of them would die because their cases were very late stage and complicated, or due to a shortage of essential medicines," said the physician, requesting anonymity for safety concerns.

Sudan has for months teetered on the edge of famine, with nearly 26 million people -- more than half the population -- facing acute hunger, according to the UN.

Adnan Hezam, a spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said there must be "immediate support in terms of supplies and human resources to medical facilities".

Without it, "we fear a rapid deterioration" in already limited services, he told AFP.

To Moussa, the doctor, some days feel "unbearable".

"But we can't stop," he said.

"We owe it to the people who depend on us."



Palestinians Hope ‘No Other Land’ Oscar Win Brings Help as They Face Possible Israeli Expulsion 

Salem Adra, left, brother of Palestinian activist Basel Adra, who won Best Documentary Feature at the Oscars for "No Other Land" talks with a local Palestinian shepherd as they stand near an Israeli settlers' outpost at the West Bank village of al-Tuwaneh, Monday, March 3, 2025. (AP)
Salem Adra, left, brother of Palestinian activist Basel Adra, who won Best Documentary Feature at the Oscars for "No Other Land" talks with a local Palestinian shepherd as they stand near an Israeli settlers' outpost at the West Bank village of al-Tuwaneh, Monday, March 3, 2025. (AP)
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Palestinians Hope ‘No Other Land’ Oscar Win Brings Help as They Face Possible Israeli Expulsion 

Salem Adra, left, brother of Palestinian activist Basel Adra, who won Best Documentary Feature at the Oscars for "No Other Land" talks with a local Palestinian shepherd as they stand near an Israeli settlers' outpost at the West Bank village of al-Tuwaneh, Monday, March 3, 2025. (AP)
Salem Adra, left, brother of Palestinian activist Basel Adra, who won Best Documentary Feature at the Oscars for "No Other Land" talks with a local Palestinian shepherd as they stand near an Israeli settlers' outpost at the West Bank village of al-Tuwaneh, Monday, March 3, 2025. (AP)

Just last week, Israeli troops came and tore down a Palestinian family’s shed in this remote, hilly corner of the West Bank, residents say. It was the latest instance of destruction targeting a collection of hamlets whose population is threatened with expulsion.

Palestinians in the Masafer Yatta area cheered the Oscar win of the documentary “No Other Land,” which depicts life in the beleaguered community, and hoped it will bring them some help.

In al-Tuwaneh, one of the hamlets that make up Masafer Yatta, Salem Adra said his family stayed up all night for the Oscar ceremony. They watched as his older brother, Basel Adra, the film’s co-director, came on stage to accept the award for best documentary.

“It was such a huge surprise, such joy,” he said.

“No Other Land” follows Basel Adra as he risks arrest to document the destruction of Masafer Yatta at the southern edge of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, joined by his co-director, Israeli journalist and filmmaker, Yuval Abraham.

The joint Palestinian-Israeli production has won a string of international awards, starting at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2024. Five years in the making, it gained greater resonance amid Israel’s devastating military campaign in Gaza that forced almost its entire population from their homes, as well as increasing raids in the West Bank that have caused the displacement of tens of thousands of Palestinians.

At the same time, the film has raised hackles in Israel, scarred by the bloody the Oct. 7, 2023 attack by Hamas that triggered the war.

Salem Adra, who at times helped his brother film for the movie, said he hoped the Oscar win “opens the world’s eyes to what’s happening here in Masafer Yatta.”

“It’s a win for all of Palestine and for everyone who lives in Masafer Yatta,” he said.

He said that since the film was first released, threats and pressure against his family have increased. Their car has been stoned by settlers. After the movie won an award at the Berlin International Film Festival a year ago, the military returned over and over to the family home, and once detained his father, searching his phone and asking, “Why are you filming?”

The Israeli military designated Masafer Yatta as a live-fire training zone in the 1980s and ordered residents, mostly Arab Bedouin, to be expelled. Israel said the Bedouin did not have permanent structures in the area. But families say they have lived and herded their sheep and goats across the area long before Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war.

After a 20-year legal battle by residents, Israel’s Supreme Court upheld the expulsion order in 2022. The around 1,000 residents have largely remained in place, but troops regularly move in to demolish homes, tents, water tanks and olive orchards — and Palestinians fear outright expulsion could come at any time.

Salem Adra said the latest destruction came Wednesday, when troops tore down the shed of a family in a nearby hamlet.

Standing on a stony ridge above al-Tuwaneh, Salem Adra said Jewish settlers backed by the military have set up 10 outposts around the village since Oct. 7, 2023.

Shepherd Raed al-Hamamdeh, 48, led his herd of goats across the rocky land. He pointed to one outpost — with tents and a trailer flying the flag of an Israeli military unit — on the other side of a small valley. Farmers no longer tend the olive grove in the valley for fear of being attacked.

Al-Hamamdeh said the military uses drones to drive off herds if they get too close to the outposts. “Settlers attack. When we herd sheep, we can’t go far as you can see. Only up to this point can we reach,” he said. He pointed to the rubble of a house that he said settlers had destroyed, driving out the family and burning their furniture.

In Israel, the film garnered little media attention since its release — and what attention it did get has been angry. When it won the documentary prize at the Berlin festival, its Israeli director Abraham came under fire for an acceptance speech that called for an end to the war in Gaza without mentioning Hamas’ initial attack and taking of the hostages held in Gaza.

In his Oscar acceptance speech, Abraham spoke of both. But that did little to calm criticism in Israel. Culture and Sports Minister Miki Zohar called the win “a sad moment for the world of cinema.” He said the film distorted reality and accused its creators of using “defamation” of Israel as a way help promote the documentary.

Usually, Israeli films that are nominated for prestigious international prizes receive boastful accolades in Israel.

But after the Hamas attack, “everyone is in mourning or in trauma, we can hardly hear any other voice on any other subject,” Raya Morag, a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem who specializes in cinema and trauma, said last week.

On Monday, she said it wasn’t yet clear if the win will bring the documentary more attention in Israel. But, she said, “it won’t be possible for people to ignore the message of the two directors, including for people that haven’t seen the film.”

In his acceptance speech Sunday night, Basel Adra called on the world “to stop the injustice and to stop the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people.”

He said he hoped his newborn daughter would “not have to live the same life I am living now ... Always feeling settler violence, home demolitions and forceful displacement.”

On Monday, his brother Salem walked down from the ridge along with his 4-year-old son to a family home.

He checked the CCTV cameras the family has set up around the house to watch for settlers. They were still filming.