At least seven people were killed and 20 others wounded this Saturday in a helicopter and drone attack on the town of Old Fangak, northern South Sudan, which also targeted a Doctors Without Borders (MSF) hospital.

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“At 4:00 AM today, the MSF hospital in Old Fangak, South Sudan, was bombed. The pharmacy was destroyed. All medical supplies were lost,” the organization said in a statement.

MSF lamented that this is “the only operational hospital in the area” and recalled that health centers “are not a target,” although it did not directly accuse any group of the attack, which occurred in the midst of a wave of violence that broke out in early March between government troops and the White Army militia in the north of the country.

According to the note, the attack began around 4:30 AM, when two combat helicopters “first dropped a bomb on the hospital pharmacy” and, subsequently, “fired for half an hour at the town of Old Fangak.”

“Around 7:00 AM, a drone bombed the Old Fangak market. There are at least seven dead and 20 wounded,” MSF denounced, condemning the attack and recalling that the attacked hospital “serves more than 110,000 people, who already had extremely limited access to healthcare before this attack.”

Fangak County Commissioner, Biel Boutros said to a press agency that the helicopters and drones belonged to the South Sudan People’s Defence Forces (SSPDF), while it claimed that the violence caused the displacement of more than 30,000 people from the city.

The crisis began on 4 March, when the White Army, originally aligned with the opposition, took a SSPDF garrison in the northern town of Nasir, This triggered a wave of arrests by the Juba government and a military campaign against the militia with air support from Uganda.

South Sudan, which gained independence in 2011, suffered a decade of war that resulted in the deaths of some 400,000 people and ended with the 2018 peace agreement, It stipulated a division of power between the government and the opposition, but its main provisions have never been implemented.

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