The civil war has been going on for three years now, and the situation seems to be getting worse.
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The airstrikes in Darfur have failed to hit their targets. Instead, these refugees have suffered.
Airstrikes by the Sudanese military in Darfur have forced refugees to seek shelter and medical care as they say they have fallen victim to bombs intended for the army's opposition.
Ten-year-old Isa Abdallah Fadul was injured in an airstrike on a busy market in Darfur last year. Isa and her family are among the latest arrivals from Sudan seeking treatment at this MSF clinic amid a brutal civil war. The Sudanese military and the Sudan Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group have been engaged in a brutal conflict since April 2023. According to a recent UN report, the military has been launching airstrikes to repel the RSF advance, causing high death tolls and worsening the humanitarian situation, with refugees fleeing to remote parts of the border. A bomb from one of those airstrikes hit Isa 10 months ago, shortly after paramilitaries infiltrated the market. Her father treated her wounds, but proper treatment has been difficult to find. MSF recently expanded its mobile clinic services to meet the growing demand from incoming refugees, a number expected to increase after the Sudanese military recaptured the capital Khartoum in March. And while the RSF regrouped in its Darfur stronghold, this was the scene just days later when another airstrike hit an open market in North Darfur. The Sudanese military and RSF were accused of atrocities. Following the airstrike on the market, the army was accused of indiscriminately targeting civilian areas. The army responded that any claim that the attack was an atrocity committed against civilians was completely false. RSF, meanwhile, has frequently faced accusations of genocide from the United States over ethnic massacres committed by its soldiers and allied militias. Time and again, the same pattern emerged in our interviews with survivors. RSF troops would enter a village or town, followed by an airstrike from the Sudanese military. In this refugee camp in Adra, further south along the border with Sudan, another family who had just arrived shared their story. For refugees who do cross the border, the first step is assessment and treatment before decisions are made about what to do next. Back in Tine, Isa’s doctors say her leg is infected and that she will need to be transferred to a larger hospital in the coming days.
The first stop for many Sudanese refugees fleeing deadly ground attacks and airstrikes in Sudan is a remote mobile medical clinic run by Doctors Without Borders on the border with Chad. With Sudan’s civil war now in its third year, intensifying airstrikes have become a driving force for many refugees to flee the country for safety in neighboring Chad.
“I’m always afraid of planes,” said Kubra Abdullah Daud, 25, a Sudanese refugee who had just crossed the border alone with her 11-month-old daughter. MSF staff rushed her to a makeshift tent clinic just steps from the border, where she told them she had fled the Darfur capital El Fasher after an airstrike killed her brother. She said it was a drone attack by the paramilitary Rapid Support Force, RSF
“As the Sudanese Armed Forces have made progress in Khartoum, we’ve seen more [RSF] moving toward Darfur,” said Kate Hickson, Amnesty USA’s sub-Saharan Africa advocacy director. “Wherever the RSF has been, we’ve seen villages being burned, aid being blocked, conflict-related sexual violence, and we expect that to increase in the coming weeks.”
While Ms Hickson noted an expected increase in ground attacks as RSF forces regroup in their stronghold in Darfur, she said the driving force behind the recent displacement was airstrikes on both sides of the war.
In recent months, the influx of refugees into the region has prompted MSF to expand its services along Chad’s more rural northern border areas. Survivors who recently fled the Darfur region told The New York Times how RSF fighters infiltrated their villages or markets shortly after they were hit by airstrikes from the Sudanese military.
“The RSF would raid the village [and then] [the Sudanese military] would strike,” said Fayza Adam Yagoub, 38, from Saraf Omra in a refugee camp in Adra, Chad. “But the RSF would escape and the poor people would get hit.”
Most recently, on March 25, a Sudanese military airstrike on the small village of Tura in North Darfur killed at least 54 people and wounded dozens, according to local monitoring groups, who called the attack a war crime – a charge the army denied. RSF fighters and their allied militias have also been accused of targeting civilians.
The Sudanese army and Reporters Without Borders forces are embroiled in a brutal civil war that has killed nearly 20,000 civilians and displaced more than 12 million people, according to the United Nations. The situation is only getting worse, the United Nations said.
