Lives in the capital once seemed to be immune to the dreadful violence that affected people elsewhere in Sudan.The rapid ruin of my former home is difficult to fathom The tragedy of Khartoum

WE THOUGHT IT WOULD LAST A DAY, TWO AT most. When the sound of gunfire began to ring around parts of Khartoum early one Saturday in April, calls from family and friends in the city sounded relatively little alarm.

- Nesrine Malik

People were hearing that there had been skirmishes near the airport, and reported seeing pickup trucks ferrying troops at speed across the city. Those nearer central Khartoum said they heard the sound of artillery, but others said there was no gunfire, only loud explosions, and speculated that perhaps they were the result of military training exercises. A minority suspected it was the start of a clash between two military factions that had been jostling for power for months, but no one could foresee the scale of what was about to happen. Whatever it was, I was convinced there was no cause for alarm. I had been in Khartoum only a few weeks earlier and, even though the city felt tense, life was perfectly normal.

"It'll die down," an old friend told me. "It always does." It didn't. In the 48 hours after the first reports of trouble, life in Khartoum shattered. I was in London, and the news came in a horror reel of videos posted on social media and sent on WhatsApp. People trying to leave from Khartoum airport crouched in terror, sheltering from loud explosions. Planes preparing for takeoff were bombed on the runway. Military aircraft screeched across the skies of the capital, clumsily bombing militia targets positioned in civilian areas and levelling residential neighbourhoods. Tanks rolled through the city, crushing cars under their tracks. It was the last days of Ramadan, and the streets, which had, only hours before, been full of people preparing for Eid festivities, were strewn with dead bodies.