In brief
Abdu-Rabbu Ahmed, a laboratory technician, recounts the horrors faced by healthcare workers in el-Fasher as paramilitary attacks escalate. The alleged massacre of patients and medical staff at the Saudi Hospital has drawn international condemnation, with numerous accounts illustrating the devastating impact of the ongoing conflict. Survivors share their traumatic experiences as they flee to displaced persons camps, facing uncertainty and deep loss.
A man who escaped the last functioning hospital in the Sudanese city of el-Fasher before a reported massacre by paramilitary troops says he has lost all hope and happiness.
I have lost my colleagues, Abdu-Rabbu Ahmed, a laboratory technician at the Saudi Maternity Hospital, told the BBC.
I have lost the people whose faces I used to see smiling... It feels as if you lost a big part of your body or your soul.
He was speaking to us from a displaced persons camp in Tawila some 70km (43 miles) to the west of el-Fasher, the regional hub which was taken over by paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in the last week of October after an 18-month siege.
The RSF has been fighting the Sudanese army since April 2023, when a power struggle between their leaders erupted into a civil war.
The alleged killings of at least 460 patients and their companions at the Saudi Hospital were one of the most shocking among widespread accounts of atrocities - some of them filmed by RSF fighters and posted to social media.
In a statement, the World Health Organization (WHO) said it was appalled and deeply shocked by the reported shootings and the abductions of six health workers.
The RSF has dismissed the accusations as disinformation, declaring that all of el-Fasher's hospitals had been abandoned. It disputed the claims by filming a video inside the hospital grounds showing female volunteers tending to patients.
A freelancer based in Tawila gathered interviews for the BBC. Mr Ahmed told him he had carried on working at Saudi Hospital since the beginning of the war, despite regular shelling by artillery, tanks and drones.
The shelling started around six in the morning, Mr Ahmed said, recounting the terror faced. As we walked, drones were bombing us. There was a state of terror; I saw many people die on the spot, there was no-one who could save them.
Accounts of the alleged hospital massacre were reported by two Sudanese doctors' groups, citing sources on the ground, and an el-Fasher activist network. Yale University's Humanitarian Research Lab said satellite imagery corroborated the reports.
With significant displacement of families and communities, many escapees arrive in camps with harrowing tales of loss and survival. Women and children are particularly vulnerable, facing abductions and violence amidst the chaos.
As the conflict continues to escalate, survivors like Mr Ahmed express despair over the future, with limited hopes of returning to el-Fasher. I do not have any hope of returning to el-Fasher, he states resolutely. After everything that happened and everything I saw. Even if there was a small hope, I remember what happened in front of me.\
