MSF condemns deadly attack on hospital in South Sudan as 'clear violation of international law'

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JUBA, South Sudan (AP) — At least seven people have been killed after a hospital in a remote part of South Sudan was targeted in an aerial bombing, Doctors Without Borders said Saturday.

The medical facility is located in a northern town known as Old Fangak, some 475 kilometers (295 miles) outside of Juba, the capital.

The medical charity, also known by its French initials as MSF, released a statement condemning the attack on its hospital, said to be the only source of medical care for 40,000 residents, including many people displaced by flooding.

The attack began after 4 a.m. when two helicopter gunships dropped a bomb on a pharmacy, burning it to the ground, the statement said. In addition to seven deaths, 20 people were injured, according to the statement.

MSF said the attack was “a clear violation of international law."

It was not immediately clear why the facility was targeted. A spokesman for South Sudan’s military could not be reached for comment.

Additional strikes occurred hours later near a market in Old Fangak, causing widespread panic and displacement of civilians, according to several eyewitnesses.

Old Fangak is one of several major towns in Fangak county, an ethnically Nuer part of the country that has been historically associated with the opposition party loyal to Riek Machar, South Sudan’s first vice president, who is now under house arrest for alleged subversion.

The town has been ravaged since 2019 by flooding that has left few options for people to escape the fighting. One eyewitness, Thomas Mot, said that some left by boat, while others fled on foot into flood waters.

The hospital attack is the latest escalation in a government-led assault on opposition groups across the country.

Since March, government troops backed by soldiers from Uganda have conducted dozens of airstrikes targeting areas in neighboring Upper Nile State.

Multiple Western embassies, including the U.S., said in a statement Friday that the political and security situation in South Sudan has “markedly worsened" in recent days.

The embassies urged President Salva Kiir to free Machar from house arrest, and called for a "return to dialogue urgently aimed at achieving a political solution.”