When Aseel Ibrahim and her family woke up in southern Khartoum to the sound of gunfire on Saturday morning, they found themselves trapped in the middle of the fighting that has been tearing Sudan apart ever since.
Gunshots pierced through windows as if they were coming from everywhere, she said. Since electricity was cut off shortly after the fighting began, Ms. Ibrahim and her family quickly ran out of food and water.
“We quickly realized that we would either die from gunshots or from hunger,” said Ms. Ibrahim, 20, who lives in Khartoum with her parents and brother. The home is close to a camp of the Rapid Support Forces, a paramilitary group at war with the Sudanese Army. “There was no other way but to evacuate.”
Like millions of residents stranded in Khartoum, the Sudanese capital that is at the heart of the struggle between two competing generals, Ms. Ibrahim and her family spent several days sheltered at home, unable to go out.
Street fighting and airstrikes have made it nearly impossible to move across Khartoum, trapping residents in their homes and students in classrooms or in dormitory houses.
Many of them are struggling to gain access to dwindling supplies of food and medicine.
More than 450 people are also stranded at the University of Khartoum, according to Germain Mwehu, the spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Sudan. An unknown number of airline passengers and workers are trapped in the precincts of the main international airport, which has halted commercial flights.
For those trying to flee the country, heavy damage to the airport has pushed countless families to formulate strenuous trips by road. But traveling by car is also risky, and one neighboring country, Chad, has closed the border.
“But there is no safe land road,” said Rana, a 29-year-old pharmacist who is expecting a baby this summer and was planning to fly to her native Saudi Arabia on Saturday. Rana asked to be identified by her first name only for fear of reprisals.
Mr. Mwehu, from the Red Cross, said that people could not be evacuated from Khartoum, and that many parts of the city were left without water and electricity.
Still, on Monday Ms. Ibrahim’s family was finally able to leave their home around noon, but only after her father, she said, ventured outside to talk to soldiers from the Sudanese Army, who later let the family’s Land Cruiser pass.
Ms. Ibrahim, a freelance graphic designer and an office manager at an information technology company, had relocated temporarily to a relative’s home in the Khartoum suburb of Al-Kalakla, where the atmosphere was quiet, she said.
“Some people are almost living normally in some parts of Khartoum,” Ms. Ibrahim said. “Others are living through war.”
In many neighborhoods, residents are not safe at home. Fighters identified as belonging to the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group have looted households, held civilians at gunpoint on the street and assaulted the European Union’s ambassador in his home. In Rana’s area, near the airport, R.S.F. fighters were, as of Tuesday evening, controlling the street where she lives, she said.
Like millions of others, Rana remained stranded in Khartoum, sheltering behind a mattress, with neither side observing the cease-fire that was supposed to go into effect Tuesday night.
Ms. Ibrahim said she did not know how long she might be away from home. She said she had taken some of her most valuable belongings: a Hello Kitty chain, Polaroid pictures, a few books — including one from the Sudanese writer Tayeb Salih — and her three cats.
“We may go back home at some point,” she said, “and not find anything behind.”
The New York Times
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