Many who can’t flee fighting face danger, despair

LONDON >> Mahmoud almost never leaves his small apartment in east Khartoum.

Electricity has been out for most of the past month, so he swelters in the summer heat. When he does venture out to find food, he leaves his mobile phone behind because of looters in the street.

Otherwise, he hunkers down in fear, worried that an artillery shell could burst into his home.

Exhausted, confused and unable to escape the conflict-ravaged Sudanese capital, the young research technician tries blocking out the reality of his surroundings.

“I am reading my book collection for a second time,” he said.

One work helping him get by is “Models of the Mind,” a 2021 neuroscience book about how mathematics help explain the workings of the brain.

Since the conflict broke out last month, more than 1.3 million people have fled their homes to escape Sudan’s fighting, going elsewhere in the country or across the borders.

But Mahmoud and millions of others remain trapped in Khartoum and its sister cities of Bahri and Omdurman, unable to leave the central battleground between Sudan’s military and the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary.

For them, every day is a struggle to find food, get water and charge their phones when electricity is cut off.

All the while, they must avoid the fighters and criminals in the streets who rob and brutalize pedestrians, loot shops and storm into homes to steal whatever of value they can find.

Dollars have become hard to find and dangerous to hold, a target for looters.

App a lifeline

Amazingly, Bankak, the banking app of the Bank of Khartoum, continues to function most of the time.

It has become a lifeline for many, allowing users to transfer money and make payments electronically.

Mahmoud uses the app to pay the one shop owner he visits to stock up on canned goods. During weeks when electricity was out, the shop owner still gave him what he needed and let him pay later.

A technology company that Mahmoud worked for before the fighting puts around $50 on his app account every few weeks.

That transfer allows him to keep eating. “If I have money in my bank account and Bankak is operating, everything will be good,” he said.

Like others who spoke to The Associated Press, Mahmoud asked to be identified only by his first name for fear of reprisals.

Since April 15, the Sudanese army, led by Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan, and the RSF, commanded by Gen. Mohamed Hamden Dagalo, have been locked in a violent power struggle that has turned the once sleepy Khartoum into an urban battlefield. More than 800 civilians have been killed, according to the Sudan Doctor’s Union.

On Monday a week-long cease-fire began, the conflict’s seventh, with fighting easing across parts of the city. But gunbattles and bombardments still continue despite the pledge made by both forces in Saudi Arabia.

Residential areas and hospitals have been pounded by army airstrikes, while RSF troops have commandeered homes and turned them into bases.

The more immediate danger is often the armed men and looters in the streets.

‘Like a puppet’

Waleed, another resident of east Khartoum, said he has had several terrifying encounters. In one case, he saw around 30 RSF fighters, some who looked no older than 15, tormenting a passerby, waving their weapons at him and demanding he lie on the ground, then shouting at him to stand up.