The scars of war among survivors in Sudan

KHARTOUM, Sudan — Three years of war have devastated much of Sudan. The impact has been pressed into the skin of survivors, and their memories.

Thousands of people are dead. Millions are displaced. Associated Press journalists spent more than a week in and around the capital after the army retook Khartoum last year. It continues to fight elsewhere against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.

Here are some of the war’s survivors and their stories. A member of the military media accompanied the AP during the visit, including during interviews. The AP retains full editorial control of its content.

Soccer dreams shattered

Omer al-Toum had dreamed of playing for Sudan’s national soccer team. But everything changed in October, when an unexploded weapon went off in his house as he tried to use it to loosen a nail. He lost part of his right leg and left arm. His remaining leg was shattered.

Calm and good-natured, the 33-year-old swoons these days over his 8-month old daughter, trying to stay positive.

“When I knew that my leg had been amputated, my family expected more of a reaction from me but I didn’t show them how affected I was,” he said.

Now al-Toum can’t bathe or get out of bed alone, and some doorways in the house aren’t wide enough for his wheelchair. He wants prosthetics but must travel abroad for good ones.

He’s found solace in coaching soccer, and tells young players to stay in school to keep other options alive.

“As long as you are still breathing, you are still capable of doing many things. And when God takes something away from you, he will surely compensate you with other things,” he said.

A sister’s death

Noon Madani didn’t want to leave the house that day in August nearly three years ago, but her older sister insisted. Paramilitary forces controlled her neighborhood outside Khartoum, but an overdue bill needed to be paid.

On the way home, a missile killed her 18-year-old sister and crushed the 16-year-old Madani’s legs.

Soft-spoken in her wheelchair, her legs in casts, she recalled looking at missile fragments in her sister’s head as she lay beside her, unable to move.

“You can’t imagine when someone suddenly tells you that your daughters were hit by an artillery shell. You enter a phase of breakdown,” said their father, Omer Bakar.

Madani remained in a hospital for six months for surgeries, battling infections and sometimes waiting for a doctor to be found after others fled.

Doctors say she should be able to walk again. Her younger brothers wheel her to school every day. She studies science and dreams of becoming a doctor.

“We are trying to forget the war,” her father said, “the nightmare we finally woke up from.”

8 years old

When her house was struck in February 2025, Fatma Ageb’s husband was asleep. Her older daughters had just discussed what to get their baby sister for her birthday. That was the last thing the 38-year-old remembers of that day.

The shelling killed her husband and their older daughters, 10 and 12. It pierced her body with shrapnel and badly injured their 8-year-old.

“If it wasn’t for Zeinab I wouldn’t want to live. She’s always calling for her sisters and father,” Ageb said, wiping tears from her cheeks.

The attack scarred her daughter’s face and she lost her right eye. She wears a glass one in its place.

Sitting beside her mother at a hospital and wearing a necklace with a character from the movie “Frozen,” Zeinab shyly held up a drawing she made and winced in pain while a doctor attended her wounds.

Friends and relatives pooled money for the girl’s operations but she needs more, and her mother doesn’t know where she’ll find the money.

While she tries to be strong for her daughter, Zeinab’s scars are a reminder of what they’ve lost.

A volunteer shaken

Tariq Abuzeid had spent years helping others, raising money to run soup kitchens out of his house and distributing medicine to the sick. When the war came to Khartoum, the construction worker kept assisting people.

But in December 2023, he was caught in intense shelling after distributing food. He lost his right leg.

Surrounded by family, the 52-year-old now tries to be stoic, yet breaks down when he thinks about how circumstances have changed.

“I used to serve people. … Now I feel like I am a burden,” he said.

The attack caused massive bleeding, which he said compromised his immune system. He takes dozens of pills a day but is still in pain. He struggles to find a good prosthetic and a wheelchair, not easy in Khartoum.

And yet his volunteer work continues. Large metal bowls were stacked in his yard as he prepared to serve others their next meal.

Fleeing sexual assault

By July the hunger had become too much to bear, so the 50-year-old woman fled the besieged town of Dilling in South Kordofan with her two daughters. But she says they were abducted by the paramilitary RSF.

Hands bound, faces covered, they said they were driven for hours to a makeshift base in the desert with more than a dozen other women. The woman said she was gang-raped there until she bled, and was beaten regularly for months.

The AP does not name people who have been sexually assaulted. The United Nations has called sexual violence one of the Sudan war’s “defining features.”

Each night, the woman would cringe hearing fighters’ footsteps approach the room where they were held. The men would point to the woman they wanted and take her away, she said.

When they came for her daughters, 25 and 20, she told them to take her instead.

One night when the fighters were out, she fled with her daughters into the desert. Terrified and weak, they walked for days before finding help in another town.

The RSF did not respond to request for comment.

Now they are in a center for women in Khartoum. Crying, she said a doctor told her the injuries from sexual assaults were so bad that her uterus should be removed.

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