Sudan

Doctors in Sudan are under attack in recent weeks as they are emerging as a leading force in a wave of anti-government protests. The Sudan Doctors’ Syndicate reports, for example, that security forces have shot dead a doctor and attacked hospitals with tear gas and live ammunition. Doctors have also been arrested and injured.

Most of the world has abandoned the civilians being bombed daily in Sudan’s Nuba Mountains. But Dr. Tom Catena saves lives there daily.

During an aerial attack on a Sudanese village, Sudan’s air force bombed and partially destroyed a hospital run by the international medical humanitarian organization Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in the war-torn South Kordofan region Monday, depriving civilians of critical medical care, the organization said today.

“The situation [in our village] was very bad,” said Saudia Idris, a refugee from Blue Nile State. “There was no relief. The planes were constantly bombing us and the militia were attacking us. It was no way to live,” she told Human Rights Watch. “Disease began to spread, but we couldn’t get any medication because the militia were always attacking.” The Sudanese government’s indiscriminate aerial bombardment and shelling in Blue Nile and Southern Kordofan states has killed and injured scores of civilians since the conflict began more than a year ago, Human Rights Watch said in a report, Under Siege.