At least 70 people are now reported dead after the strike on Al-Deain Teaching Hospital in East Darfur, Sudan, among them seven women and 13 children. More than 140 were injured, and the hospital–one of the most important medical facilities in the area–has been rendered non-functional, depriving more than two million people in Darfur of proper care.
There is no shortage of language for such horror. The far more grotesque problem is the world’s tolerance for such attacks. Since the war began in April 2023, Sudan has become the site of the world’s largest displacement crisis. Nearly 12 million people remain displaced, including about 9.5 million within the country, while 33.7 million are expected to need humanitarian assistance in 2026. Such a large number of affected people should compel urgency. Instead, they have produced fatigue.
The attack on Al-Deain belongs to a larger pattern. The World Health Organisation had already validated 201 attacks on health care between April 2023 and the end of 2025, causing 1,858 deaths and 490 injuries. Using a broader methodology, Insecurity Insight identified 671 attacks on Sudan’s health system over roughly the same period.
That matters because hospitals occupy a special place in war. They are where the distinction between combatant and civilian is supposed to survive, where a wounded child and a wounded fighter are treated first as human beings.
Darfur’s earlier years were marked by scorched villages, mass displacement and rape used as terror. The International Criminal Court is once again investigating atrocities in Darfur, and its prosecutor has warned that crimes against humanity and war crimes were recurring across the region. Moreover, the conviction of Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al-Rahman on 27 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity showed that the record exists, even if enforcement remains thin.
That is the real scandal. Every new massacre arrives in a place already mapped by warnings, satellite imagery, aid assessments and prior investigations. Nothing about Sudan’s collapse is obscure.
However, if the bombing of a major hospital serving two million people cannot compel a stronger diplomatic and legal response, the international system is effectively admitting what many victims already know: some wars are allowed to devour civilians in full public view. *