Nurses maneuver between gunfire and shelling to make house calls, deliver babies and provide care to those unable to reach hospitals. Families barely eat to conserve dwindling food and water supplies as temperatures rise. And the few Good Samaritans who go out to help the elderly or put out a blazing fire face harassment and arrest from the fighters in the streets.
It’s been nearly a month since the rivalry between two generals erupted into open war in Sudan, plunging the country deep into a humanitarian crisis and reshaping life in one of Africa’s largest and geopolitically important nations.
The Sudanese capital of Khartoum has endured the most intense fighting, prompting embassies and the United Nations to to evacuate their nationals and personnel members — leaving millions now facing shortages of water, food, medicine and electricity.
Clashes between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary group known as the Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, continue despite repeated ceasefires reportedly agreed upon by both parties.
Conversations that started in Saudi Arabia last weekend between the warring factions, brokered by Saudis and Americans, have so far yielded no breakthrough – even if these talks have only the modest goal of achieving an actual ceasefire, to allow humanitarian aid to enter the country .
“We feel increasingly desperate because there is no end in sight,” said Tagreed Abdin, a 49-year-old architect who has been living with her three sons and husband in Al-Diyum, a neighborhood close to Khartoum International Airport. of some of the fiercest battles.
Ms Abdin, speaking on the phone, said she spends most of her days shuttling her boys from one side of their apartment to the other like shelling overhead. When things get quiet, she makes them sit by the open windows to escape the scorching heat.
“It’s an unprecedented tragedy,” she said, adding that she prefers the sounds of war to the humming silence. “When there’s gunfire, I know they’re running out of ammunition.”
The Sudanese army launched a joint advance into central Khartoum on Wednesday, with ground forces backed by armored vehicles advancing into areas largely controlled by the RSF since the start of the war, said two people with knowledge of the situation, who asked not to. are identified due to sensitivity.
The military’s move appeared to be an attempt to gain ground before a possible ceasefire is signed, both people said. An agreement remained out of reach late Wednesday but appeared to be closing in, they said.
Four years ago, Khartoum was at the center of a popular uprising that promised to usher in democracy after decades of dictatorship in the Northeast African nation of 45 million people. But in the past month, the city, which lies at the confluence of the Blue Nile and White Nile, has become the center of a violent power struggle between General Abdel Fattah al-Burhanthe head of the army, and Lieutenant General Mohamed Hamdanwho leads the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.
Have the collisions spread over different cities and regions, and have raged in Bahri and Omdurman, the adjoining cities across the Nile from Khartoum. At least 600 people have been killed and more than 5,000 others injured, the World Health Organization said on Tuesday. The conflict has displaced more than 700,000 people and 160,000 others, according to the United Nations have fled to neighboring nations many of them hampered by their own economic and political crises.
Khartoum residents say they have been left behind because they are sick, caring for aging relatives, or lack passports or money for transportation. Others, like Mrs. Abdin, chose to stay after learning that people were being attacked and robbed along the way, and spend long days at border crossings.
But by staying, they are caught in the crossfire and deteriorating situation on the ground.
Water and electricity infrastructure have been damaged. Banks have been looted and ATMs destroyed. Phones and internet networks are patchy, interrupting communications and hindering mobile money transactions that act as a lifeline. Factories and businesses have been destroyed and looted, depriving many of their livelihoods in an already troubled economy.
On social media, people beg for painkillers or eye drops, seeking suggestions to find running water or bury a family member in neighborhoods besieged by snipers.
It is now difficult to reach any residents by phone. But Ms Abdin gave a glimpse of what she saw recently when she drove out of her apartment for the first time since fighting began on April 15 to find medicine for her 80-year-old mother, who is bedridden and has hypertension. The streets near her home, usually congested with people and traffic, were deserted, she said. A building a few doors down was damaged by shelling. Garbage and debris were piled up on the corner. Taxis crowded at a gas station looking for gas. A crowd hoped that a bakery would open and offer some bread.
“It was completely unreal,” said Mrs. Abdin.
As the fighting has intensified, so have hospitals, clinics and laboratories work under pressureincreasingly come under fire.
A majority of the city’s health facilities are closed, the UN said, and only 16 percent are functioning normally. The Sudan Union of Pharmacists said the central medical facility in Khartoum, which contains crucial medicines for diabetes and blood pressure, has been closed after it was seized by the Rapid Support Forces.
The UN Population Fund also said medical care for 219,000 pregnant women had been disrupted in Khartoum alone, with supplies “dangerously depleted”. More than 10,000 women are in urgent need of obstetric care, including caesarean sections.
Medical personnel in the city have also faced reprisals.
The Sudanese doctors’ union said on Monday that the army had arrested two medical volunteers who were evacuating patients from a hospital in Khartoum. The two were later released following social media outcry.
At checkpoints manned by paramilitary fighters, many people, especially doctors, reported being harassed or having their phone messages and photos checked to determine their loyalty.
“The doctors don’t support any of these groups,” Dr. Sara Abdelgalil, a pediatric counselor, said in a telephone interview. “We don’t want this war.”
Ms Abdelgalil, who raises money and coordinates support for the medical workers from Britain, where she lives, said she has been inundated with requests from Khartoum in recent days. Doctors, she said, have asked families and patients to leave hospitals because they ran out of oxygen, medicine or fuel to run machines.
“It’s so inhuman,” she said. “It’s so cruel.”
Some residents of Khartoum who have held out so far are starting to run to the outskirts of the city.
Aya Elfatih and her family recently fled to a small village in the northern suburbs of Khartoum after bullets hit their house and pieces of their roof collapsed. Ms. Elfatih, 33, works for a non-governmental organization, and a few weeks ago helping refugees from other countries to settle in Sudan. Now she and her family have been forced from their home and fear the violence will spread to the now peaceful countryside.
“I never thought I would live to see my situation turn into this,” she said. “Sudan deserves peace. We deserve better.”
Declan Walsh contributed reporting from Nairobi.