Sudans dödligaste krig pågår utan en enda kamera

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Aisha has nightly visions of her son, who was shot dead in front of her (Bel Trew) Bel Trew

Sudanese aid workers with the Emergency Response Rooms attend to families who have fled to El Obeid (Bel Trew) Bel Trew

‘Riham’ escaped slaughter on the front lines of North Kordofan to a makeshift displacement camp in El Obeid (Bel Trew) Bel Trew

Abida says she was nearly killed in a drone strike on the displacement camp (Bel Trew) Bel Trew

General ‘Hemedti’ Dagalo, left, and General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, sign an agreement after staging a coup (AFP/Getty) AFP/Getty

The centre of destroyed Khartoum bears the scars of war between the Sudanese military and the RSF (Bel Trew/The Independent) Bel Trew/The Independent

North Kordofan has become the epicentre of the fighting in Sudan (The Independent / Google Maps) The Independent / Google Maps

Map of El Obeid showing RSF- and SAF-controlled territory around the strategic city and the Independent’s route in (The Independent) The Independent

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The tuk-tuk could not carry everyone. Aisha, a 59-year-old grandmother from rural Sudan, says fighters from the Rapid Support Forces dragged her son and extended family out of the vehicle, lined them up, and shot them in front of her. She grabbed her youngest daughter and walked, leaving wounded relatives behind on the road, watching from a distance as the fighters looted the bodies. She has spent six months since plagued by visions of her murdered son speaking to her, unable to sleep and on some days unable to speak at all.

She is one of roughly 100,000 displaced people who have arrived in El Obeid, a frontline town of half a million in south-central Sudan, after long marches along roads lined with corpses. El Obeid, the capital of North Kordofan state, has only just survived a partial siege and remains under regular drone fire and shelling. The war began in April 2023 as a power struggle between Sudanese army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and RSF leader General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, two men who had jointly staged a coup in 2021 after their alliance unseated the longtime autocrat Omar al-Bashir following the 2019 uprising.

Conflict monitor Acled has verified nearly 60,000 dead; other estimates run to 150,000, and there is no official toll. Around 14 million people have been forced from their homes, making Sudan the largest displacement crisis on the planet, as well as its largest humanitarian and hunger crisis. The UN has declared famine in pockets of the country and has warned that attacks in Darfur bear the 'hallmarks of genocide'. A UN fact-finding mission this year said the RSF's ethnically targeted killings bore exactly that description.

The UN describes the scale of sexual violence, particularly by the RSF, as unprecedented. Its children's agency has documented the rape of babies as young as one in El Fasher in Darfur, which fell to the RSF in October after an 18-month siege. Sudanese officials in Khartoum say the oldest rape survivor they have documented is 85. In El Obeid, residents fear the same patterns are now arriving at their doorstep; the UN has warned that the violence seen in El Fasher is emerging there. Human Rights Watch says there is mounting evidence that the United Arab Emirates has bankrolled the RSF in breach of arms embargoes, which the Emirates denies; the RSF, for its part, accuses the army of backing from Egypt and Iran.

In the mudbrick huts abandoned by residents who fled El Obeid, displaced families say they registered with UN agencies and NGOs and have received nothing. Sudan remains one of the most underfunded conflict zones in the world, and there are no signs of a ceasefire. The war's centre of gravity has shifted to Kordofan, the corridor linking Darfur to central Sudan, and to a town where newborns in the intensive care units are described by doctors as shrivelled and otherworldly.