“We had to do everything on our own, manage,” says a Sudanese woman who fled Khartoum

Dalia Abdelmoneim has only one word to describe the days she has just spent, “a nightmare”. In Khartoum, this young Sudanese lived in the Amarat district, between the airport and the army headquarters, at the heart of the fighting that has been going on for ten days the camp of army chief General al-Bouhran and that of his former ally General “Hemedti”, the leader of the paramilitaries. A The 72-hour ceasefire concluded on Monday April 23 between belligerents under the aegis of the United States has been partially respected.

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Dalia remembers fighter jets every day and that rocket that fell on her house, damaging the roof. “We were nervous, she says, the foreigners were evacuated and we understood that after the fighting would resume and that we had to flee because the fighting would be worse afterwards”. “We are Sudanese. We have no one to help us. So we had to do everything on our own, find a bus, charter it, negotiate the prices, make do,” she adds while several hundred foreigners, including French people, have been evacuated from Sudan in recent days. Thousands of people continue to try to flee the capital, 10 days after the start of the fighting which left more than 459 dead and more than 4,000 injured, according to the UN.

It takes 300 euros for a one-way trip to Port-Sudan, on the Red Sea. A fortune that many people cannot afford. On Sunday, Dalia understood that she no longer had a choice: “The people who helped us leave saw bodies in front of the house”.

“We will have to start all over again”

The young woman is not angry, she says, with the international community for having made the foreigners leave. But she does not understand, on the other hand, that they do not admit their wrong: “What is happening in Sudan, they are responsible for it. They did not listen to the Sudanis when they were told that they could not discuss with Hemedti and his paramilitary forces, nor with the army because they only fight for power”.

Dalia fled Khartoum with her mother and nephew. In Port Sudan, they wait with the crowd that has fled the capital. She hopes to be able to return home and does not wish to leave Sudan. She remembers the hope that inspired her during the revolution that led to the departure of Omar al-Bashir. “We’re going to have to start all over again, she says. But I will always have hope. I will not lose hope for my country and for my people.”