Dozens of women were seeking shelter in a childbirth facility in El Fasher, Sudan, as the slaughter began. Some had just delivered their newborns, while others were actively in labor.
Working that night, a 28-year-old lab technician, a technician named Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, managed to survive the ordeal. “The sounds of screaming reached me of women and children,” he states. “They executed everybody inside the hospital. We who were able to escape, did so.”
This brutal attack stands as one of the most shocking examples in the ongoing war tearing the North African nation apart. Armed soldiers raided the hospital, leaving dead more than 460 innocent people inside.
Rights organizations have called it “an act of unspeakable brutality,” and a prime example of the vanishing safeguards for civilians caught in conflict zones in multiple global hotspots.
An Unprecedented Assault On Childbirth Services
Despite every significant nation have signed the international laws of war, which obligate them to protect civilians, the past year has experienced a historic high of assaults against medical infrastructure. Expectant mothers are exceptionally vulnerable due to their need for locally available medical care.
An investigation of records reveal an shocking trend: nearly 300 attacks on and disruptions to maternity care facilities, staff, and pregnant women over the last three years, including at least 119 targeted attacks against hospitals and delivery wards.
“These are not natural consequences of war. They constitute a pattern of reproductive violence.”
The majority of these assaults have occurred in Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan, where a vast number of pregnant women are trapped.
Mothers have lost their lives, blocked from reaching help, or forced to give birth in perilous and unsafe environments. The data also indicates that at least 68 maternal health workers have been murdered, 15 taken hostage, and 101 arrested—sometimes in the act of delivering babies.
The Global Crisis for Mothers and Newborns
Statistics are thought to be a substantial underreporting, as they only include incidents covered by the media. In many war-torn areas, information is scarce.
Last year, analysis showed that 50% of women who died during pregnancy or childbirth were in a conflict area. This underscores a devastating pattern.
Beyond killing women and staff, these attacks are wrecking maternal and neonatal care facilities, creating a grave danger to societal repopulation and recovery.
The Situation in Gaza
In Gaza, the devastating effect on reproductive health rights has been cited by a UN commission as part of the basis for declaring certain actions a genocide.
Despite periods of calm, doctors report that women and children continue to die from inadequate care, owing to critical shortages of medicine and equipment. UN officials have relayed women giving birth in rubble because hospitals were out of reach.
“We’ve had rockets hitting the wards, operating rooms, and maternity wards,” states the head of a major hospital’s gynecology department. A military spokesperson has denied deliberately targeting maternity care or seeking to affect birthrates.
Ukraine's Ordeal
Since early 2022, at least 80 childbirth centers have been struck and ruined in Ukraine. Journalism from conflict zones describe births occurring in shelters and extreme psychological pressure leading to maternal health issues.
“We are being singled out,” asserts the head of obstetrics at a repeatedly damaged hospital in Kherson. Russian authorities have denied deliberately targeting civilians.
“In fact, every facility is now a potential target,” comments a medical director in Sumy. “Even if air defence intercepts a drone, the falling debris can strike a hospital.”
A Culture of Impunity
For the more than 676 million women living near active conflicts, there are minimal protections and rare trials for atrocities for those assaulting reproductive health.
This lack of accountability has led to a “environment where anything goes,” argues a human rights lawyer. “Assaults against maternal services, like coerced birth or involuntary sterilization, can be understood as acts of genocide by destroying a group's future.”
Other Conflict Zones
In El Fasher, the area lacked access to humanitarian aid long before the hospital attack, with malnutrition increasing drastically, especially among children and pregnant women.
In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, information is scarce because of a inability to report from rebel-held areas. Nevertheless, shelling in Goma struck a baby care unit, killing mothers, babies, and nurses.
In Myanmar, medical facilities have been bombed and dozens of midwives and patients have been arrested, killed, or injured over the past two years of civil war.
The Collapse of Safe Childbirth
Most maternal deaths are avoidable with standard medicine, but war collapses medical infrastructure. Rights groups note that terror is compelling women away from facilities once considered safe, pushing them toward risky home births devoid of emergency care.
“The deliberate attack on maternity wards indicates a larger and alarming strategy: the use of attacks on medical facilities as a weapon to spread fear and to break societal cohesion,” notes a legal researcher.
“Hospitals are not completely safe for hospitals in war. Under the Geneva conventions, medical facilities may forfeit their immunity if used for acts deemed ‘militarily advantageous’, which has increasingly been used as a justification.”
