"There is no safe place in Sudan' Refugees speak of the horrors of war

Suba Dafallah was selling vegetables at a market in the Sudanese city of Nyala one morning in March when he got a distressing call from his sister, saying their mother wanted to speak to him. “Come quickly. There are clashes in the town,” he recalled his mother saying.

- Carlos Mureithi

He gathered his belongings, closed his stall and ran home.

Members of the Rapid Support Forces, the paramilitary group that has been fighting the Sudanese armed forces in a civil war since April 2023, had attacked a military camp in the city in the state of South Darfur and were rampaging through residential areas.

When he got to the house in Al-Jir neighbourhood, amid the chaos of gunshots and people scattering for their lives, he found the bloodied bodies of his mother and two sisters on the floor, with gunshot wounds. “There was a bullet in her heart,” the 25-year-old said of his mother.

Dafallah is one of hundreds of thousands of Sudanese people who have fled into neighbouring South Sudan. He is sheltering at the overcrowded Renk transit centre near the border, with more than 1,000 others.

After seeing the bodies of his mother and two sisters, Dafallah stepped outside, to see another of his sisters being taken away by RSF fighters. One hit him with the butt of his rifle as he tried to stop them.

Dafallah’s sister cried out his name as she was put into a car and tied up. He ran after the vehicle, calling her name, before collapsing.

He buried his mother and dead sisters two days later, then fled towards Renk, more than 800 miles away, trekking some of the way and hitching rides, taking nothing with him but the clothes on his back.

Along the way, in Ed Daein city in East Darfur, he saw the RSF attack a camp for internally displaced people. RSF fighters set a market on fire and went on looting sprees. In the chaos, he passed a woman who had been run over by a vehicle, her children left crying by the side of the road. “I tried to help but couldn’t,” he said.