Sudanese flee across border and back to escape overrun oil town

Now, the 25-year-old mother of five -- paralysed from the waist down -- lies shell-shocked on a cot in the Abu al-Naga displacement camp, a dusty transit centre just outside the eastern city of Gedaref, nearly 800 kilometres (500 miles) from home.

But her family's actual journey was much longer, crossing the South Sudan border twice and passing from one group of fighters to another, as they ran for their lives with their children in tow alongside hundreds of others.

"We fled with nothing," Hamed told AFP. "Only the clothes on our backs."

Hamed and her family are among tens of thousands of people recently uprooted by fighting in southern Kordofan -- the latest front in the war between Sudan's army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) that erupted in April 2023.

Since capturing the army's last stronghold in Darfur in October, the RSF and their allies have pushed deeper into neighbouring Kordofan, an oil-rich agricultural region divided into three states: West, North and South.

In recent weeks, the paramilitary group has consolidated control over West Kordofan, seized Heglig -- home to Sudan's largest oil field -- and tightened its siege on Kadugli and Dilling in South Kordofan, where hundreds of thousands now face mass starvation.
'Chased to the border'
On the night of December 7, the inhabitants of Heglig -- many of them the families of oil technicians, engineers and soldiers stationed at the field -- got word an attack would happen at dawn.

"We ran on foot, barefoot, without proper clothes," said Hiyam al-Haj, 29, a mother of 10 who says she had to leave her mother and six siblings behind as she ran around 30 kilometres to the border.

"The RSF chased us to the border. The South Sudan army told them we were in their country and they would not hand us over," she told AFP.

They were sheltered in South Sudan's Unity State, but barely fed.

"Those who had money could feed their children," al-Haj said. "Those who didn't went hungry."

They spent nearly four weeks on the move, trekking long distances on foot and spending nights out in the open, sleeping on the bare ground.

"We were hungry," she said. "But we didn't feel the hunger, all we cared about was our safety."

Eventually, authorities in South Sudan put them in large trucks that carried them back across the border to army-controlled territory where they could head east, away from the front lines.

Hamed, who was paralysed during childbirth, said that "during the truck rides, my body ached with every movement".

But not everyone made it to Gedaref.

Between the canvas tents of the Abu al-Naga camp, 14-year-old Sarah is struggling to take care of her little brother, alone.

In South Sudan, their parents had put them on one of the trucks, "then they said the truck was full and promised they would get on the next one".

But weeks on, the siblings have received no word as to where their mother and father might be.
Camps under pressure
Inside the tents, children and mothers sleep on the ground, huddled together for warmth, while outside children dart across the cracked soil, dust clinging to their bare feet.

According to camp director Ali Yehia Ahmed, 240 families, or around 1,200 people, are now taking refuge at Abu al-Naga.

"The camp's space is very small," Ahmed told AFP, adding that food was in increasingly short supply.

Food is handed out from a single distribution point, forcing families to wait for limited rations.

Some women haul water from a single well, pouring it into plastic buckets to cook, wash and clean with, while others wait in a long line outside a makeshift health clinic, little more than a large canvas tent.

Asia Abdelrahman Hussein, Gedaref state's minister of social welfare and development, said shelter was one of the most urgent needs, especially during the winter months.

"The shelters are not enough. We need support from other organisations to provide safe housing and adequate shelter," she told AFP.

In one of the tents, Sawsan Othman Moussa, 27, told AFP how she had been forced to flee three times since fighting broke out in Dilling.

Now, though she might be safe, "every tent is cramped, medicine is scarce, and during cold nights, we suffer".