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NAIROBI — The paramilitary force fighting the Sudanese government has entered a major city in the heart of nation’s grain-producing region, the United Nations said, forcing hundreds of thousands of people to flee.
Wad Madani, just south of the war-torn capital of Khartoum, had been an area of relative security for the last eight months of fighting and was one of the few havens for humanitarian operations in the war-ravaged nation.
Sofie Karlsson, the spokeswoman for the U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, told The Washington Post that the situation was a “nightmare” and “we are very concerned about the potential humanitarian consequences as more people are displaced.” More than 300,000 people had fled the city in the past four days.
“Many on foot as they try to spare their lives. The horror in Sudan continues. Where are people going to go?” she tweeted.
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The advance of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) into Wad Madani, the capital of the southeastern Jazira region, is another major victory for the group, following its capture of four out of five regional capitals in the western region of Darfur. It was unclear if the RSF, led by Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, had seized the town entirely from the military, which is led by Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan.
Fighting between the two rival forces exploded on April 15 after months of escalating tensions over power-sharing. The two men had seized power in a 2021 coup against a civilian prime minister — killing hundreds of pro-democracy protesters — but soon turned on each other.
Sudan, a nation of 49 million people in the Horn of Africa, rapidly became one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. The capital has been a battleground and around half the population needs aid, but efforts are severely underfunded as international attention focused on Ukraine and Gaza.
Wad Madani had a population of around 700,000 before the fighting broke out, but that swelled by another 500,000 people as families fled there to escape the fighting in the capital, where air force planes bombed civilian neighborhoods and paramilitary fighters invaded homes, robbing, raping and killing their inhabitants.
Despite massive overcrowding in Wad Madani, humanitarian agencies were able to operate there, providing food and medical services that were dangerous to offer in the capital.
Now that refuge is gone. During previous occasions when the RSF has seized territory, hospitals and humanitarian warehouses have often been attacked and looted. Women have frequently been attacked and civilian men and boys shot dead.
“The humanitarian nightmare is unraveling. The choices people have to make to protect their families, to make sure their daughters aren’t raped, to save what little they have are unfathomable to many of us but so real to the Sudanese who are living it,” Karlsson tweeted.
It was difficult to reach families fleeing the city but the social media service X — formerly known as Twitter — quickly filled with heartbroken posts. Sami Atabani, a Canadian citizen whose adopted sister had sought refuge in Wad Madani, told The Post that she had messaged him to say that there were no seats on any vehicles leaving town.
She was trying to flee with seven children, he said, and the RSF held the bridge leading to safety farther east. He was terrified her ethnic background might make her a target; witnesses have said RSF fighters and associated militias have repeatedly targeted certain African tribes during fighting in the western region of Darfur.
“She’s lived with us since she was five days old,” he said. “It was heartbreaking to receive a message from her asking me to advise her what to do. I worry that if I tell her to go here or there, I will make a fatal mistake.”
Hamid Khalafallah, a political analyst, tweeted about how is father was fleeing now for the fourth time since May. “I cannot imagine how it feels to keep reliving this nightmare. Someone make this end, we are tired.”
The director of Mygoma orphanage, whose nearly 300 children the Red Cross fled to Wad Madani from Khartoum, posted an impassioned plea for help in moving them once again.
In other tweets, women traded tips on how to prevent pregnancy or induce abortions in case they were raped.
“I can’t express the heartbreak,” posted one woman, who left Tuesday morning, sharing pictures of numbed families trudging down dusty streets dragging suitcases. “May god avenge us.”
Wad Madani is a prize because it’s the heart of Sudan’s grain-producing region. The harvest has already been disrupted because banks have closed and farmers were unable to purchase fertilizers and other equipment. It is also the gateway to Kosti, another major humanitarian hub.
Kholood Khair, the founding director of Sudanese think tank Confluence Advisory, said the fighting threatened to make the war even longer and more fractured.
“The public opinion tide is turning on [military chief] Burhan, following the fall of Medani and he’s got none to blame but himself. He’s invested in foreign trips to project an image of a head of state more than he’s invested in winning battles. Now, he is more expendable than ever,” she tweeted.
An RSF victory is unlikely to bring stability however, Khair said. Sudan is home to many heavily armed ethnic militias, some of whom are poised to enter the fight if the RSF were to declare victory.
“If the RSF think they can claim victory and take over, they have gravely underestimated the political cauldron that created them and the success story that they themselves have emulated: pick up a gun and challenge the state,” she tweeted.