David Charo Kahindi, MSF medical coordinator in South Sudan: “I didn’t think this hospital would be bombed.”

I was woken up by the shelling around 4:50 a.m. on Saturday, May 3, in Old Fangak, South Sudan . I could hear helicopters flying overhead and people screaming all around. Every time I heard the helicopters, I feared for my life, the lives of the population , the patients, and the staff. The shelling continued for about an hour. All I could hear were gunshots and people screaming.

When silence finally fell, I immediately took a boat to the hospital. I met our guard at the gate and saw that it was completely destroyed. There were bullet holes everywhere. As I entered the building, I saw the remains of exploded weapons.

When I arrived at the pharmacy, it was on fire. Everyone—the team and the community—was trying to put out the fire with buckets of water. It wasn't an easy task because our fuel tanks were just a few meters from the pharmacy, so we were afraid that if the fire continued, the fuel would explode and cause another disaster on top of the one we were already experiencing .

At first, I thought there was a chance to save some medicines, but it soon became clear that whoever bombed the hospital wanted this pharmacy and everything inside to burn to the ground. It took us about five hours to completely extinguish the fire.

The hospital had been operating for over 10 years and was a lifeline for over 100,000 people in the area.

Then I entered the hospital. First, I went to the men's ward, where there had been two patients the night before. When I entered, there was no one there, but the floor had bullet holes and there was blood. I was worried. I didn't know what had happened or where the patients had gone. The same thing happened in the women's ward. That bombing killed at least seven people.

Then I arrived at the emergency room, where the team was busy stabilizing and treating patients who had just arrived from the village. There were a total of 20, and some were in very, very critical condition, and we urgently needed to stop the bleeding. Some had been shot in the head, chest, and abdomen. We tried to do everything we could, but we had no supplies beyond what was in the room before the attack. And they clearly weren't enough.

Once the patients were stabilized, we evacuated them by speedboat to a village about an hour away, which we considered safer. Most of the patients were women. There were also injured children as young as 15. There was nothing in that village, just a tent. We were in the middle of nowhere. There, we kept the patients and gave them whatever medicines we had been able to bring. The next day, they were airlifted to a hospital in Akobo for further treatment.

However, some 10,000 people had fled to the same location, and by dawn, it was clear we didn't have enough supplies to operate a health center capable of treating so many people. We urgently called the team in Juba, and with UN support, we were able to airlift 350 kilograms of medical supplies to set up a health center from that tent. We hope we won't receive any more casualties, but we continue to receive reports that bombing is continuing in other areas.

I'm completely devastated by what happened. The hospital had been operating for over 10 years and was a lifeline for over 100,000 people in the area. Hospitals should never be targeted. I totally condemn this bombing. It was a 35-bed hospital, with outpatient clinics, inpatient wards, a maternity ward, and we could refer serious cases to higher-level facilities. Now, nothing remains.