Ibrahim Mohamed heard gunfire outside his house as bullets streaked over the skies of Khartoum, where, he said, he saw warring militias killing people and looting houses.
The 27-year-old software developer his home in the Nuzha neighborhood of the Sudanese capital was in “the middle of the war zone” when fighting broke out in April.
“I even saw many people who were shot by… the people who were fighting in the streets near our house,” he said. “It is not safe at all to be in Khartoum, so I had to flee.”
More than two months later, fighting between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has descended into a brutal conflict, characterized by reports of sexual and genocidal violence and civilian casualties, and triggering an exodus of refugees.
As many as 3,000 people have been killed since the conflict started on April 15, Sudan’s minister of health, Haitham Ibrahim, told Saudi-owned al-Hadath News Television on June 17. Almost 2.5 million people have been displaced inside and outside the country, according to recent figures from the International Organization for Migration (IOM), amid ongoing hostilities against the civilian population that has exacerbated the humanitarian crisis.
Many Sudanese have fled the fighting to neighboring countries like Egypt, Chad, Ethiopia and South Sudan. But some, Mohamed among them, found themselves trapped by a bureaucratic nightmare – and they say the United States is responsible.
