Inside Sudan: The war the world ignored where ‘nowhere is safe’

Résumé détaillé

Sudan’s brutal civil war is causing the largest humanitarian, displacement and hunger crisis in the world right now – the UN has warned of genocide, but it has been ignored. Bel Trew and Mohammed Amin report from the front lines

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For the last six months Aisha*, 59, has been plagued by recurring visions of her murdered son talking to her.

She cannot sleep or think clearly, she says, stumbling to a halt. “Some days she is entirely mute,” a concerned friend continues, as Aisha stares into space.

The grandmother is one of around 100,000 displaced people who have limped into El Obeid in south-central Sudan after long marches along roads lined with corpses.

She has come here looking for shelter in this frontline town, which has only just survived a siege and is itself under regular drone fire and shelling.

El Obeid is the capital of North Kordofan state, which has become the epicentre of one of the deadliest, yet most forgotten, civil wars of the 21st century.

In the blistering heat of the day, Aisha describes how paramilitaries from the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) slaughtered her son and extended family as they tried to flee their village in a tuk-tuk.

“They dragged them out, lined them up, and shot them. In front of me,” she says blankly.

Even though some of the wounded were still alive, she was forced to leave them behind, and that still haunts her. She describes watching from afar as the fighters looted the bodies, picking their way through the growing pools of blood.

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