The siege of el-Fasher in Sudan: The last surgeon standing in the city’s only hospital

Dr. Mustafa Ali Abdulrahman Ibo and his colleagues bravely performed an operation under increasing bombardment at the last hospital in el-Fasher, a town under siege for nine months in Sudan’s western Darfur region.

Over the past month the hospital has recorded 28 deaths and more than 50 injuries among its staff and patients due to intense attacks. This is the highest number of casualties recorded in a month since the siege.

“The recent continuous attacks targeting the Saudi Hospital have intensified dramatically, it has become part of our daily lives,” Dr. Ibo, a Darfuri who has lived in el-Fasher since 2011, told the BBC.

She said the scariest day was when the medical team performed an emergency caesarean section when the shelling started – a near-death experience for all of them.

“The first one hit the perimeter wall of the hospital… (then) another shell hit the maternity operating room, the debris damaged the electric generator, cut off the electricity and plunged us into complete darkness,” he said.

The surgical team had no choice but to use the torch on their phone to complete the two-hour operation.

Part of the building collapsed and the room was full of dust and shrapnel scattered all over the place.

Dr Khatab Mohammed, who has performed the operation, explained the dangers.

“The situation is bad, the environment is no longer sterile,” the 29-year-old doctor told the BBC.

“After ensuring our safety and the patient’s safety from the shrapnel, we cleaned him and changed our surgical gowns because our clothes were full of dust and we continued the operation,” he said, adding that the patient could have died from complications.

After successfully delivering the baby, the doctor moved the mother and newborn to another room to recover and then gathered to take a group photo.

It was a testament to their survival, but Dr Mohammed added: “I thought it was our last photo, believing that another shell would hit the same place and we would all die.”

They then performed two more life-saving emergency surgeries that day.