Sick patients in South Sudan have been killed in their beds and medical facilities have been looted and burned to the ground, aid group Doctors Without Borders (MSF) warned yesterday.

MSF said that the extreme violence and lack of respect for health workers shown in the country’s civil war has made the group’s work almost impossible.

Warning of an “alarming pattern of lootings and attacks on patients” and health facilities, MSF said its work was being strangled by a “climate of utter disrespect and fear.”

Members of the aid group discovered at least 14 dead bodies in a hospital in the contested city of Malakal over the weekend.

Several of the dead bodies had been shot while lying in their beds, the group said.

Group leader Raphael Gorgeu said MSF facilities in the towns of Leer and Bentiu had been looted and completely destroyed.

He said that the aid group did not want to leave South Sudan but must look after the safety of its workers.

The men carrying out the fighting had shown “absolutely no respect for healthcare workers,” he said.

“How can we stay to the very last moment without a guarantee that our staff and patients will not be targeted?” he asked.

“Assaults on medical facilities and patients are part of a broader backdrop of brutal attacks on towns, markets and public facilities.”

Thousands have died, 800,000 are displaced and 3.2 million are in immediate need of food due to fighting that broke out in mid-December.

At the end of January, thousands of residents fled as fighting broke out in Leer.

MSF, which has worked in the city for 25 years, evacuated some staff while 240 others fled into the bush.

They returned this week to find their hospital — a facility that serves 300,000 people — destroyed.

“We don’t want to leave South Sudan but we have to look at things very carefully now,” said Mr Gorgeu.

“It is not the investment we put in, but the trust and the respect we are held in that is actually put into question.”