Safa is shaken when TT reaches her over the phone. She is in Madani, three hours south of Khartoum, after fleeing the fighting in the capital on Wednesday.
Everything was calm until last Saturday, April 15, when she received a message from her relatives: “Don’t go out, we hear explosions”. The fighting had not yet reached her neighborhood at the time, but it did later that evening.
— First we heard shots, and then fighter jets above us, says Safa.
During the shooting, they stayed indoors. In retrospect, she is happy that there were enough necessities in the house – and she points out that many people in the capital have it much worse.
— We only had a power outage one day and then we could use a generator. Many other families are completely without electricity and water, and are in the middle of the fighting.
Works at Ericsson
On weekdays, Safa works as an IT specialist at the Swedish telecom giant Ericsson in Stockholm. She originally came to Sweden to study in Umeå. When she was told earlier this year that her father had broken his hip, she decided to visit her homeland.
Safa had booked a return ticket to Stockholm on April 29. But all departures have been canceled from Khartoum airport, where there have previously been reports of fierce fighting and burning aircraft. According to figures from the World Health Organization, more than 400 people have lost their lives and several thousand have been injured as a result of the conflict.
As the shooting subsided somewhat in southern Khartoum on Wednesday, Safa and her family decided to leave the capital. They made their way south to Madani, which is fully controlled by government forces.
The road had been lined with fighting: During the drive, she counted four burned-out combat vehicles, and they encountered a post of a dozen or so militiamen from the paramilitary RSF forces fighting the Sudanese army.
The plan now is to try to return to Sweden as soon as possible, possibly by ferry from Port Sudan to Saudi Arabia. But the road there is uncertain, and without a clear front line, the security situation can quickly change for the worse.
“They lack humanity”
Safa also does not trust the fragile ceasefires that are promised. When she spoke to her relatives in Khartoum on Friday, they said the warplanes had stopped flying, but gunfire was still heard nearby.
— It depends on where you are in the city, but in some parts it is really bad. My uncle is still there and he told me that a bullet hit his house, she says.
Her fears are that the conflict is growing and that foreign actors are being drawn in. General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan of the government forces has close links to the Egyptian government. There are reports that the infamous Russian Wagner group has supplied their opponents in the RSF forces with anti-aircraft robots.
For its own part, Safa does not support any party in the conflict.
— Both sides are equally terrible. They shoot each other everywhere and don’t care if it happens among hospitals or schools. They lack humanity, it’s absolutely crazy.