Wracked by violence in which thousands of civilians have been slaughtered, aid camps burned to the ground and hundreds of children raped, Africa’s largest war has torn Sudan apart and forced more than 12 million people from their homes.
The cataclysmic battle for supremacy has pitted the Sudanese military, controlled by the country’s top commander, Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by his former deputy, Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Daglo Mousa — a former camel dealer widely known as Hemedti.
The conflict has created the world’s biggest humanitarian crisis, according to the United Nations which says at least 24,000 people have been killed, though activists say the number is far higher.
Both sides face war crimes accusations from the United States which sanctioned the northeast African nation’s government for using chemical weapons on Thursday — a claim it denied.
The RSF meanwhile, has denied accusations of ethnic cleansing in the country where “some 30.4 million people — over two thirds of the total population — are in need of assistance, from health to food and other forms of humanitarian support,” according to a February report from the United Nations refugee agency.
After the war entered its third year last month, NBC News spoke to three people who have been caught in the crossfire.
‘You just have to walk’
Around seven months pregnant with her first child, Abeir Abdelrahman said she was resigned to losing her baby as she fled her home in the Jabra neighborhood in the south of Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, which had been overrun by RSF gunmen in September 2023, five months after the fighting began.
“You have to walk. Just walk. And you have to walk quickly because at any time bombs and shots are going to be there,” she told NBC News in a telephone interview this month. “At one point I thought: ‘It’s OK. You lose the baby, but you will be alive with your family. You’ll be safe with your husband, so God will give it to you again,’” she added.
But as they trekked south, she said they lost contact with her 63-year-old father, who had fallen behind. After four days of frantic backtracking, she said they discovered he had been arrested at an RSF checkpoint and accused of stealing his own belongings.
“We were all very scared,” she said, adding that they feared he might be shot. “My mom didn’t eat for a long time,” she said. Around the same time she found out that her brother, who had decided to stay home, had been seriously wounded in a rocket attack, she said.
After 35 days in captivity, Abdelrahman said her father was released. Although he had cholera and malaria, he was relatively unharmed, she said. Her brother survived surgery despite almost losing a leg.
Abdelrahman moved with the rest of her family farther south to Jazirah state, where she gave birth to her daughter, Samiya, now 16 months old.
“Everyone was in tears, my mom, me and dad, just a moment full of joy, and I just felt lucky, and I felt blessed that God helped me and protected her,” said Abdelrahman, who is now teaching English in the eastern city of Kassala.
“Samiya is a girl of the war because she’s strong. And whenever she’s going through things in her life, even when she gets bigger, I’m sure she will overcome them,” she added.
‘Guns at my face’
Others like, Amr Ali, 39, did not get the chance to flee.
An IT worker and freelance photographer, he said he spent 10 years in the Netherlands before returning to Sudan in August 2021 with plans to open a photography business and settle down.
Just over two years later, as the fighting neared his home in eastern Khartoum, he said he recorded final messages for his mom and sister with “the sound of the shooting and the bombing” in the background.
On Oct. 5, 2023, as bullets ripped into his apartment and rockets exploded nearby, he said he hid under his bed. When he emerged, he said eight or nine RSF members had surrounded him and asked if he was a member of the military.
Refusing to believe he was a civilian, Ali said they started “beating me like crazy.” Accusing him of being in the military, he said they “were just pointing guns at my face, shooting it next to my ears, next to my feet” and threatening to kill him.
Transferred to a nearby gas station that had been turned into a makeshift prison, he said he was hit with “so many hands, so many punches, so many slaps and the kicking and kicking.”
He said he could smell “weed and alcohol” on the breath of the fighters who hit him with pipes and sticks, and threatened to shoot him in mock executions. The beatings only stopped at night after other RSF fighters complained about the screaming because they were trying to sleep, Ali added.
After 10 days, Ali said he was allowed to contact his family who provided evidence that he was a civilian. This, he said, led to a complete change in attitude from his captors, who took him somewhere for a shower and gave him new clothes. Over a large meal, he said an RSF member apologised for his mistreatment.
“I was just confused. We’d gone from beating and ‘We will kill you’ and ‘We will destroy you’, to ‘Sorry, we will take care of you,’” Ali said.
After he was released on Oct. 31, he said he immediately sought medical treatment. His hand had to be re-broken so it could heal properly, he added.
Then he fled Sudan for Egypt, where he is waiting to be resettled by the U.N. Asked whether he accepted the RSF’s apology, he said, “Absolutely not. They ruined my country.”
‘We had to find a way out’
Just across the River Nile in the city of Omdurman, Natasha, a British mother of four, said the “bombing became so bad” they had to leave her home where the army had set up positions on the roof. NBC News agreed not to use her last name because she fears for her safety.
With her husband back in the U.K., she said she moved in with her mother-in-law, Asmaa, 70, and over the course of 18 months watched as law and order broke down and armed gangs roamed the neighbourhood “stealing from houses and people were getting killed.”
A 12-year-old friend of her son “was shot by a sniper,” Natasha, 47, tearfully recalled, adding that the bullet “went through him and it went through his sister.”
His death was the catalyst in her decision to leave her home, she said, adding that electricity and water had begun to cut out and food had become scarce.
With kidnapping common in Sudan, she said she knew her status as a foreigner with white skin made things “very, very dangerous” for her, so she donned sunglasses and wrapped herself from head to toe before they made their escape in a rickshaw in September.
“I thought: ‘OK, I might die on my way out. You know, if I don’t do this I’m going to die. I can’t just sit here like this. One of us is going to get shot.’ So it was just a numb feeling,” Natasha said.
She said that her driver cleared RSF checkpoints without stopping, before dropping her off near a military checkpoint.
As they neared, Natasha said soldiers fired above their heads and she quickly waved a piece of white clothing. The shooting stopped and they were allowed across the checkpoint.
“I just remember when my husband’s mum said to me, ‘That’s it. It’s over. You can take off your shades,’” Natasha said, starting to cry.
After the military regained control of Omdurman, she said she was planning to move to a nicer part of the city and open another kindergarten.
War crimes and hunger
Sudan’s military on Tuesday said it had taken full control of the Greater Khartoum region, but the RSF still controls most of the western region of Darfur and some other areas where battles continue to rage.
The fighting has been marked by atrocities including mass rape and ethnically motivated killings that amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, especially in Darfur, according to the U.N. and international rights groups. In March the United Nations Children’s Fund reported that armed men have raped hundreds of children, including some as young as 1.
On Thursday, the United States said it would impose sanctions on Sudan’s government after determining that it used chemical weapons last year. They will include limits on American exports and U.S. government lines of credit and will take effect around June 6, State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said in a statement.
Sudan rejected the move and described the allegations as false in a statement.
Nonetheless, a total of 24.6 million people, or around half the population, are facing acute hunger, according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification — an organization that sets a scale used by the United Nations and governments to assess hunger.
“I did my very best not to leave Sudan, but yeah, the situation just wasn’t really helping,” Ali, the photographer, said. “It’s not getting better. It’s heartbreaking.”
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