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From his bed in a makeshift tent in the besieged Sudanese city of el-Fasher, 13-year-old Ahmed Abdul Rahman can still hear the thud of artillery. He was badly injured in a recent shelling.
“I feel pain in my head and my legs,” he says faintly. His mother, Islam Abdullah, adds: “His whole body is full of shrapnel… his condition is unstable.”
El-Fasher, in the heart of Darfur, has been under siege for 17 months by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). After seizing the capital Khartoum, the RSF is pushing to take the army’s last stronghold in the west. For tens of thousands of civilians trapped inside, survival has become a daily struggle.
Hospitals have been bombed and are running out of supplies. Food is scarce. Ahmed’s bony frame shows the hunger stalking the city. Nearby, Hamida Adam Ali lies immobile with a rotting leg wound after shell fire. “My children cry for food,” she says. “Sometimes they eat, sometimes they go to bed hungry. I have nothing.”
The army’s presence has dwindled to a small pocket around the airport, while the RSF claims new advances, circulating videos of its fighters at captured bases. Analysts warn that taking el-Fasher would secure the RSF’s supply lines from Libya and give them a strategic advantage across Sudan’s western borderlands.
The cost to civilians is devastating. Drone strikes — reportedly supplied by the UAE, though denied by the Gulf state — have become increasingly deadly. In one attack last month, more than 75 people were killed when a mosque was struck during morning prayers. Mass graves were dug when shrouds ran out.
Samah Abdullah Hussein lost her son in another strike on a schoolyard. “He was hit in the head… his brain came out,” she says through tears. “My other son was also wounded. I was hit too.”
The UN warns of possible atrocities if the RSF overruns the city. Human rights groups accuse the paramilitaries of targeting non-Arab ethnic groups such as the Zaghawa, charges the RSF denies even as evidence of war crimes mounts.
For those who escape, the horror lingers. One refugee watching RSF videos from abroad spotted old friends and relatives among those stopped by fighters. “It devastated me,” he says. “My memories are being destroyed along with the people I know.”
With each passing day, fear deepens for those left inside el-Fasher — civilians clinging to life as Sudan’s brutal war grinds on.
