Security forces in Sudan claimed they ‘perform their legal duties’ during recent protests, but open source evidence shows how they attacked hospitals, medical workers and patients with tear gas in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum.
This report uses open source investigative techniques to geolocate, chronolocate and analyse footage of two attacks by security forces on an emergency department in Sudan in December 2021 and January 2022 where staff and patients were tear gassed while inside the hospital.
Warning: this report contains links to footage of traumatic scenes of people showing signs of choking, panic and distress.
The past year has seen numerous attacks against medical workers and hospitals in Sudan by security forces. Medical staff have even taken to the streets in protest of the violence against them.
This report is the open source verification of two attacks on a hospital in Khartoum, Sudan. It covers the events using digital information to answer the following questions:
- What happened?
- Where did it happen?
- When did it happen?
- Who might be responsible?
Overview
Tensions in Sudan have been growing as more demonstrators have taken to the streets to protest against the country’s military rule and coup in 2021, but there has been a trend of violence against protestors by security forces, and more specifically attacks on medical facilities.
Pro-democratic protests have been met with what, in many cases, can only be described as an overuse of violence by Sudan’s security forces. Civilians have been shot, tear-gassed, and beaten. Forced internet blackouts have stopped much of this footage being shown to the world.
The level of violence seen on the streets of Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, is not new. Since December 2018 demonstrators have taken to areas in Khartoum, as well as other cities in Sudan, and the world, calling for democracy in the country. During these protests there have been numerous instances where civilians have been attacked and killed, many of which have been attributed to state-security forces.
In one attack on a protest sit-in, documented through forensic work, at least 127 people were killed in the morning of June 3, 2019 when armed forces including paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) attacked a peaceful sit-in with extreme force. World powers responded with shock and condemned the event.
Survivors displaying injuries such as gunshot wounds, tear gassing, and other injuries due to the attack were hurried to hospital. But they were not safe while being treated, as patients and medical staff were attacked in hospital grounds and access to some hospitals was blocked.
Fast-forward to 2022 and again more footage has emerged showing attacks on hospitals. This time there are clear signs that tear gas is being used inside hospitals in Khartoum.
On at least two occasions Khartoum Teaching Hospital was targeted in December, and again in January, forcing medical staff and patients outside of the facility and coughing due to the effects of the smoke inside the building.
In a statement on the demonstrations from January 6, 2022, which saw heavy use of violence by security forces against protestors, and at least one hospital attacked, Sudan Police said: ‘the joint forces and police forces performed their legal duties in securing the demonstrators and public and private property’. The statement also claimed the ‘police forces confirm that they are continuing to carry out their legal duties in maintaining security and public safety’.
This investigation focuses on the documentation and verification of those two attacks on the Khartoum Teaching Hospital on December 30, 2021 and January 6, 2022.
Khartoum Teaching Hospital
Khartoum’s Teaching Hospital (مستشفى الخرطوم التعليمي) is located here on Google Maps.
The hospital has a central location in the city and its grounds borders a number of specialised medical facilities such as Khartoum Hospital of Dermatology, Faculty of Nursing and the ENT Hospital. The hospital also has a COVID-19 isolation ward and an emergency department.
The focus of much of the content documented in this investigation has been located to the entrance of the emergency department, located here.
The below image from Google Earth shows the centrality of the hospital area as it sits close to Khartoum’s market place, airport and government headquarters — all areas where demonstrations have either regularly taken place, and where security forces have clashed with protestors.
Emergency Department attack — December 30, 2021
Protest numbers surged in Khartoum on December 30, 2021, as demonstrators showed up in numbers, with some media reporting as many as ‘tens of thousands on the streets of Khartoum’.
Much of the protest activity was focussed either in central Khartoum or around neighbouring Omdurman to the west of Khartoum.
Footage uploaded by a pro-revolution account on December 30, 2021, shows distressing scenes with at least three patients being treated outside of the emergency unit at the Khartoum Teaching Hospital.
Scenes from the same event were shared by the Sudan Central Doctors Committee claiming this was a ‘flagrant violation of human rights’ by the Sudanese authorities and clarified that security forces had fired tear gas into the hospital.
The location of the footage can be verified through the identification of the building seen in the background, which is also on the grounds of the hospital area. The footage was filmed here on Google Maps, which indicates the location as the ‘emergency department’.
Footage filmed from inside the hospital appears to show medical staff emptying out at least one of the rooms and moving outside as smoke fills the room. The staff are covering their mouths with the posts claiming there is tear gas in the hospital.
Images were posted by Reuters of a visit by Norwegian ambassador to Sudan Therese Loken Gheziel and Swedish ambassador to Sudan Signe Burgstaller on January 10 after the alleged attacks. The images of the room they were in match those seen in the footage. This match can be seen in the illustrations below.
This footage is not unique from that attack on December 30. Multiple videos uploaded showed patients being treated in the same location in front of the emergency department.
For example we can see the same patients being treated at the location in this footage which also provides more clear indications of the location and signs of breathing issues exhibited by the patients. The location can be seen here on Google Maps. The geolocation can be seen below.
By geolocating alternative angles of footage to this location it gives some identifying markers to look for in other imagery from that day.
Amidst the somewhat confusing state of the footage that came out of the protests from December 30, there appears to be a number of important pieces of content that were circulated through messaging networks and later uploaded to social media. All of which show demonstrators being pursued with what is claimed to be tear gas.
In the first video (seen here), filmed from inside the entrance to the emergency department, we can see civilians running south from the front of the emergency department. In the frames shown below we can see the plume of smoke.
Although the visual range is limited, and difficult to geolocate on its own, the footage can be geolocated in reference to the previously geolocated footage where the patients were seen in front of the emergency department. These visual matches can be seen below.
Another image allows for a more clear timeline to be identified by using shadows from the day. To respect the identity of the original uploader I will not link to the original post, however the image can be seen below.
Geolocation of the above image indicates it was taken at this linked location. The visual match to satellite imagery is indicated below.
Analysis of the image allows for the indication of time of day using shadows seen cast in the image. For example, there are clear shadows in the image cast by a rock seen in the carpark. While a rock is not accurate down to the square meter of a location, it does give an indication as to a window of the time of day the image was taken.
The shadows in the above image indicate that it was taken late in the afternoon or early evening between 4pm and 6pm local time. The tool used to calculate this was Suncalc, and the prefilled values can be seen here, as well as in the screenshot below.
There are two clear videos that place the security forces in the hospital grounds, and indicates the firing of tear gas into the hospital grounds.
The first video, shows a group of security force members running close to the location where the tear gassing took place.
The footage can be geolocated to here using the features seen in the video. In the illustration below, frames in red indicate the security forces seen, as well as the red arrow indicating direction of movement.
Footage seen here shows the security forces firing tear gas rounds into the entrance of the Khartoum Teaching Hospital.
Geolocation and analysis of all of the footage together indicates that there was a clear intention by Sudan security forces to enter the hospital premises of Khartoum Teaching Hospital with deliberate intent to use force against fleeing protestors.
As the below image of the analysis of the verified data indicates, there were numerous points within the hospital grounds where tear gas was used against the demonstrators and where security forces were clearly seen in the grounds at locations extremely close to where medical staff were having to move patients out of the emergency department due to the gassing.
Emergency Department attack — January 6, 2022
Further large-scale protests on January 6, 2022 saw at least three anti-coup protestors killed, according to international reporting. During those protests the same emergency department was again targeted with tear gas. A series of videos was shared by Sudan’s Ministry of Health condemning the activity.
The footage shows again the same entrance at two different times of the day. First is footage of what appears to be security forces with plain-clothed people that appear to be working alongside the security forces, as seen below.
One of the uniformed members of the group is carrying what appears to be a gas gun. More specifically, it is likely that this is a model similar to the dimensions of the Webley-Schermuly 37mm gas gun as identified by arms investigator Leone Hadavi.
This footage indicates there was tear gas in or out the front of the emergency department, which was then kicked away by one of the members of the security group, then some of the members attempted to enter the facility.
The second video shows medical staff fleeing the facility with signs of symptoms of tear gassing (namely rubbing the eyes and coughing). Some appear to be wearing full masks.
Both videos show the same entrance to the emergency department from alternative angles as seen below.
The videos were uploaded one hour and 37 minutes apart from each other, which can be derived from the Facebook post times.
Matching the level of the shadows on specific objects in the imagery also indicates a similar measure of time, indicating that the footage with the security forces was filmed shortly before the footage of the staff running out of the room suffering from tear gas symptoms.
For example, using the shadow line on the fence as seen in the following two images verifies that one piece of footage was taken at some point in time after the other.
Further information on what happened in this event can be gleaned from medical association representative accounts such as the Twitter account @SD_DOCTORS which provides a statement from the ‘Unified Office of Sudanese Doctors’ claiming “that coup forces stormed Khartoum Teaching Hospital and fired tear gas inside its emergency department”.
Final points
What this shows is that there is a clear link between the presence of security forces and tear gassing of the emergency department at Khartoum’s Teaching Hospital on at least two separate occasions in December 2021 and January 2022.
This is despite the claim by Sudan’s security forces that they ‘perform their legal duties in securing demonstrators and public and private property’.
This trend of targeting hospitals that treat a wide host of patients, including those injured as a result of the protests, has been systematic in Sudan since the country’s uprising in late 2018.
While it is a ‘flagrant violation of human rights’ in the attack on medical facilities, it appears actions like this are condoned by state security forces.
A note on this case study: The purpose of this work is to stimulate conversation, research and development in the open source investigations community, the human rights field and the events happening in Sudan, as well as to document wrongdoing and identify those responsible.
