The first stop for many Sudanese refugees fleeing deadly ground attacks and airstrikes in Sudan is a remote mobile medical clinic along the border with Chad, operated by Doctors Without Borders, also known as the M.S.F. Sudan’s civil war is entering its third year, and increasing airstrikes have been a driving factor for many refugees now fleeing the country for safety in neighboring Chad.
“I’m always afraid of the planes,” said Kubrah Abdullah Dawood, 25, a Sudanese refugee who had just crossed the border alone with her 11-month-old daughter. Doctors Without Borders staff members quickly ushered her into a makeshift tented clinic just steps from the border where she told them that she fled Darfur’s capital of El Fasher after an airstrike killed her brother, which she said was from a drone attack by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, the R.S.F.
“As the Sudanese Armed Forces have made progress in Khartoum, we’ve seen more [R.S.F.] moving towards Darfur,” said Kate Hixon, advocacy director for Sub-Saharan Africa Amnesty USA. “Wherever the R.S.F. is, we’ve seen burning of villages, blocking of aid, conflict related sexual violence, and we expect an increase in that in the coming weeks.”
While Hixon notes an expected increase in ground attacks as the R.S.F. regroups in its Darfur stronghold, she said airstrikes from both sides of the war have been a driving factor of recent displacement.
In recent months, the influx of refugees to the region prompted Doctors Without Borders to scale up their services along the more rural northern border regions of Chad. Survivors who recently fled the Darfur region described to The New York Times how airstrikes by Sudan’s military would follow shortly after R.S.F. soldiers infiltrated their villages, or marketplaces.
“The R.S.F. would raid the village, [and then] the [Sudanese military] would strike,” said Fayza Adam Yagub, 38, from Saraf Omra, at a refugee camp in Adré, Chad. “But the R.S.F. would manage to escape, and the poor people were the ones getting hit.”
As recently as March 25, a Sudanese military airstrike in the small village of Toura in North Darfur killed at least 54 people and wounded dozens more, according to local monitoring groups, who called the attack a war crime — an accusation the army has denied. The R.S.F. soldiers, and their allied militias, have also been accused of targeting civilians.
Sudan’s military and the R.S.F. have been embroiled in a brutal civil war that has killed nearly 20,000 civilians, and displaced over 12 million people, according to the United Nations, which noted the situation was only getting worse.
