UN Rights Chief Türk Urges Immediate Ceasefire as Sudan War Intensifies

# What happened

# Where the violence is spreading The fact-finding team highlighted acute risks in Kordofan, Blue Nile, and North and West Darfur. El Obeid in North Kordofan is under heavy pressure: repeated RSF drone strikes have affected water, energy and other essential services, and parts of the city remain under partial siege.

# What the investigators found Investigators reported an increase in the use of long-range drones by both SAF and RSF. Drone strikes have hit civilian locations far beyond frontline areas, including homes, schools, hospitals, markets, displacement camps, weddings and funerals.

Notable incidents included successive RSF strikes on a kindergarten and a hospital in Kalogie, South Kordofan, that killed 114 people, among them 60 children. The report also documents SAF attacks on Ad-Da'ein Teaching Hospital that killed at least 70 people.

The fact-finding mission concluded there are reasonable grounds to believe both SAF and RSF committed serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law which may amount to war crimes.

# Foreign support and regional links

# Humanitarian scale and displacement The conflict, now into its fourth year, has produced a large humanitarian emergency. More than six million people are internally displaced and about 4.5 million have fled across Sudan's borders to seek shelter in neighbouring countries.

# Health system damage Khartoum hospitals that previously functioned as key referral and teaching centres: Khartoum Teaching Hospital, the Ophthalmology Hospital and the Dental Hospital. Operating theatres have been destroyed, imaging equipment lost, and several wards have collapsed. WHO's representative in Sudan, Dr Abdinasir Abubakar, said many blocks and departments are out of service and need urgent structural repair before patients can be admitted safely. Hospital staff continue to work in parts of buildings that remain usable.

# Why this matters now The combination of expanding aerial attacks, significant foreign support to armed groups, and widespread damage to medical infrastructure compounds civilian vulnerability. The fact-finding mission's findings link direct attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure to potential international crimes, which shapes the Council's calls for accountability and for expanded mandates to investigate and preserve evidence.

# Immediate implications

• Calls to the Human Rights Council include extending and resourcing the independent fact-finding mission to continue investigations and reporting.
• Humanitarian needs for medical repair, trauma care and shelter are urgent and widespread.

# Bottom line The UN rights chief and an independent fact-finding mission present a picture of an intensifying conflict with escalating airborne attacks on civilians, documented foreign support to fighters, mass displacement, and severe damage to Sudan's health system. The Council faces pressure to extend investigative mandates, pursue accountability, and push for an immediate ceasefire and political transition back to civilian rule.