(Reuters) - The head of the World Health Organization called on Saturday for an end to attacks on healthcare workers and facilities in Sudan after a drone attack on a hospital in Sudan's North Darfur region killed more than 70 people and wounded dozens.

The WHO chief has urged a halt on attacks against healthcare facilities in Sudan after a devastating drone strike on a hospital in North Darfur killed over 70 people. The ongoing conflict between Sudan's army and RSF is causing widespread humanitarian crises and ethnic violence in the region.

The Sahel region is a geographical belt in Africa that stretches from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea, between the Sahara Desert in the north and the Savannah in the south. It is characterised by challenging environmental crises and conflicts.

In Sudan, an estimated 70 people were killed by a drone strike on a hospital in North Darfur’s besieged city of El Fasher. The World Health Organization says the Saudi Teaching Maternal Hospital — the last functioning hospital in the area — was “packed with patients receiving care” when the attack occurred.

The RSF did not immediately acknowledge the attack in El Fasher, which is over 800 kilometers southwest of Khartoum.

Seventy patients and companions died in a drone strike on one of the last functioning hospitals in western Sudan's Darfur, the region's governor said.

Some 70 people were killed in an attack on the only functional hospital in the besieged city of El Fasher in Sudan, the chief of the World Health Organization said Sunday, part of a series of attacks coming as the African nation's civil war escalated in recent days.

The World Health Organization chief called on Saturday for an end to attacks on healthcare workers and facilities in Sudan after a drone attack on a hospital in Sudan's North Darfur region killed more than 70 people and wounded dozens.

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Some 70 people were killed in an attack on the only functional hospital in the besieged city of El Fasher in Sudan

Sudan's army chief visited on Sunday his headquarters in the capital Khartoum, two days after forces recaptured the complex, which paramilitaries had encircled since the war erupted in April 2023.