Tiné hospital in eastern Chad treated 116 wounded from cross-border drone strikes, MSF says

Médecins Sans Frontières said Thursday that its team at Tiné hospital in eastern Chad has treated 116 people wounded in drone strikes across the border in Tina, Sudan, since the start of May, pointing to a renewed humanitarian toll from violence spilling across the frontier.

The medical charity, also known as Doctors Without Borders, said in a June 4 press release that the casualty load had surged in late May. Of the 116 patients treated since early May, 69 were admitted between May 17 and May 26 alone, according to MSF’s on-the-ground reporting. On May 24, MSF said, a strike hit a busy cafeteria in Tina market, sending 35 wounded people to Tiné hospital in a single day. Three were declared dead on arrival, and others reportedly died at the scene.

MSF said the wounded have included women and children, with injuries ranging from severe burns to blast-related trauma and multiple wounds. Patients often reach the hospital only after long journeys from the Sudanese side of the border, and the most serious cases are referred onward to Abéché, a larger city in Chad.

“We are receiving patients after hours of travel, often in extremely difficult and critical conditions,” Issiaka Abdou, MSF’s head of mission in Chad, said in the press release.

“In recent days, we have seen more and more women and children among the wounded,” Abdou said.

The influx is adding pressure to a border health system already stretched by the wider Sudan war and the large refugee population in eastern Chad. “Health facilities in this region are operating in a challenging environment, with high needs and limited resources,” Cissé Boucari Hamadoum, MSF’s project coordinator in Tiné, said in the release.

MSF said residents in the area attribute many of the recent near-daily strikes to the Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, a paramilitary force fighting Sudan’s army. The group said some residents reported as many as five or six strikes on certain days. Responsibility for the specific strikes described by MSF was not independently established in the sourced material, and the research for this story did not identify matching confirmation of the May casualty figures from major wire services or official hospital or government records.

Sudan’s war began in April 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces, known as the SAF, and the RSF. The conflict has repeatedly spread into the Darfur border region, where communities on both sides of the Chad-Sudan frontier have been exposed to fighting, displacement and disruption of basic services.

More than 900,000 Sudanese refugees have fled into eastern Chad since the war began, helping explain why hospitals and clinics near the border are under intense strain.

Cross-border violence around Tiné and Tina is not new. ACLED, a conflict-monitoring group, recorded a March 18, 2026, drone strike on the Chadian border town of Tine that killed at least 17 civilians.

The practical impact of the latest violence is now showing up in hospital wards in Chad. MSF’s figures indicate that a medical facility on the Chadian side of the border is increasingly treating casualties from attacks in neighboring Sudan, underscoring how the war is burdening already fragile health services beyond Sudan itself.