'Past catastrophic': Sudan fighting shutters Khartoum's hospitals

KHARTOUM, (Reuters) - The few hospitals still operating in Khartoum after Sudan's sudden explosion into war have bodies lying unburied, bullets crashing through windows and terrified medics staying away as artillery pounds nearby.

Doctors and hospital staff describe harrowing conditions with no water for cleaning, little electricity for life-saving equipment and food running out, forcing them to send sick patients home and turn away the injured.

Many of Sudan's best hospitals are concentrated in the central Khartoum streets where the most intense fighting between the army and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces is taking place, requiring doctors and patients to brave gunfire and bombardment.

At least 270 people have died since the violence erupted at the weekend, Sudan's health ministry estimates, while for the more than 2,600 people injured in the fighting as well as the many others already needing treatment, the rapid collapse of the healthcare system spells disaster.

"The hospitals now serving the wounded are so few, with limited number of doctors, so there's overcrowding of wounded," said Esraa Abou Shama, a doctor at Sudan's health ministry.

"Besides, not all the injured can reach hospital under the gunfire... We honestly need public and private hospitals to open up to provide medical services for all the injured and for all patients."

One 25-year-old university graduate who had been shot in the shoulder and declined to give his name for fear of reprisals said: "We found a functioning hospital but there was little service because there's no electricity."

At a care centre in Khartoum for children with cancer, treatment has been paused with the generator lying idle, staff said. The young children queued to collect trays of soup, rice and watermelon.

At al-Baraa, a Khartoum children's hospital, only one ward remained open this week with one medic to care for two newborn babies on ventilators, hospital manager Ashraf Elfaki said.