Millions of people going about their daily lives were suddenly thrust into the front lines when fighting erupted on Saturday between Sudan’s military and a powerful paramilitary force. Mothers were separated from babies, children trapped in schools away from parents. Many are still pinned down. Some have run out of food and water. Electricity has been down for days in swaths of the city, and phone batteries are running out as frantic family members search for one another.
The major hospitals in the capital have shut, either hit by heavy weapons or out of power, water or vital supplies. Doctors have been killed, children have bled to death trying to reach help, and armed men are invading private homes to rob, rape and kill. Some have evicted residents, taking their supplies and setting up military positions on the roof.
Tensions had been rising for weeks between Sudan’s two most powerful men, the military chief, Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo — widely known by his nickname, Hemedti — who heads the heavily armed paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.
The two generals had formed an uneasy alliance during a 2021 coup that deposed a short-lived civilian-military government, but divisions over a draft power-sharing deal and a timeline for integrating Hemedti’s forces into the military stoked their rivalry. Residents had said they noticed a buildup of RSF forces in the capital. Then someone pulled a trigger — both sides blame each other — and Sudan exploded.
Desperate messages are flying around Twitter and WhatsApp groups, seeking safety, food and help. “Wife and mother in law trapped” read one. “Looking for someone able to get supplies to a Pakistani friend in Manshiya. He is running low on food,” read another. “Urgent: 29 civilians including children are trapped 2 blocks from the Palace in Safalous Building in #Khartoum. Running out of water/food. Phones almost dead. Most of them foreigners including Egyptians, Japanese, Irish, Syrians, and USA,” read another.
Normally, aid groups and the United Nations are ready with tents, food and medical help for those fleeing war, but they are all pinned down, as well. Aid workers and diplomats have been killed, robbed and assaulted in their homes, and their warehouses and offices have been torn open and looted.
So Sudanese are trying to organize themselves, with many relying on the Resistance Committees that helped launch pro-democracy protests in 2018, contributing to the toppling of longtime dictator Omar Hassan al-Bashir. The committees are spreading word of empty homes where people can shelter, coordinating the sharing of medical and food supplies, offering transportation to the sick and helping map the ever-changing safe routes away from the fighting, said a member of one committee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for security reasons.
Sharia Mohammed, from the Mayo area of western Khartoum, fled the city after an airstrike killed her neighbor’s husband and three children Sunday. She and five other families joined the exodus walking wearily out of Khartoum. The price of bus tickets has skyrocketed. They reached the town of Kosti, south of the capital, and moved into houses emptied by other families, she said.
“We have had nothing to eat for three days,” she said. “We ran away with only the clothes we were wearing.”
Khartoum resident and former journalist Dallia Mohamed Abdelmoniem made her second attempt to escape on Thursday. She tried before, but when the family emerged from their home, they found paramilitary fighters had vandalized their vehicles. The previous day, a mortar crashed into the house where she and her family were sheltering. Friends were reporting that some routes out were safe, and others said they had been turned back at roadblocks.
“I packed my emergency bag. First time ever to do something like this. And honestly what does anyone pack? Everything becomes essential. Bribe money. Escape money. Passports. Meds. Clothes. Leave everything as is or pack away your house just in case?” she tweeted.
“It sounds trivial but I stood in front of my closet and I teared up … Leaving my house, my home the place my siblings & I grew up in is killing me. This is the house my father returned to after 20 years in exile & died in. The same house that married off my siblings. Where we hosted iftars & dinners & watched so many football matches.”
The situation is even worse in the war-ravaged western region of Darfur. In the town of Nyala, markets and medical facilities have been looted in the fighting. Most hospitals closed days ago. Those who cannot flee are beginning to form armed groups to protect their neighborhoods, said civil society activist Ahmed Gouja. Some wanted to mount raids to get guns, he said.
“The state is missing, the Sudanese armed forces are focused on protecting their headquarters, which is in the middle of the city,” he said. “The RSF control the areas around it. No one is bothering to protect civilian properties or the government offices or NGOs. Many militia groups on motorbikes are looting and killing; they are wearing civilian clothes.”
If civilian armed groups emerge or the government encourages them, it could presage a return to the dark decades of the Darfur war, he said, when militias burned down villages and killed their residents en masse. The cities had always been the only place that were mostly safe, he said. Now that was no longer the case.
“If you arm the civilians, it means you mobilize the community for war,” he said. “Everyone will fight each other. … There is very high tribalism from many years of war.”
Hafiz Haroun in Nairobi contributed to this report.
