{"id":18205,"date":"2026-06-26T18:02:52","date_gmt":"2026-06-26T18:02:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/siliconvalleymovingpost.com\/?p=18205"},"modified":"2026-06-26T18:02:52","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T18:02:52","slug":"the-scars-of-war-among-survivors-in-sudan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/siliconvalleymovingpost.com\/?p=18205","title":{"rendered":"The scars of war among survivors in Sudan"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

By SAM MEDNICK, FAY ABUELGASIM and BERNAT ARMANGUE<\/strong><\/p>\n

KHARTOUM, Sudan (AP) \u2014 Three years of war have devastated much of Sudan. The impact has been pressed into the skin of survivors, and their memories.<\/p>\n

Read more Pope Leo XIV says war \u2018never blessed by God\u2019 as he opens meeting of world\u2019s cardinals<\/a><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Here are some of the war\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Soccer dreams shattered<\/h4>\n

Omer al-Toum had dreamed of playing for Sudan\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Calm and good-natured, the 33-year-old swoons these days over his 8-month old daughter, trying to stay positive.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I knew that my leg had been amputated, my family expected more of a reaction from me but I didn\u2019t show them how affected I was,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Now al-Toum can\u2019t bathe or get out of bed alone, and some doorways in the house aren\u2019t wide enough for his wheelchair. He wants prosthetics but must travel abroad for good ones.<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

He\u2019s found solace in coaching soccer, and tells young players to stay in school to keep other options alive.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs 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,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

A sister\u2019s death<\/h4>\n

Noon Madani didn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

On the way home, a missile killed her 18-year-old sister and crushed the 16-year-old Madani\u2019s legs.<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

Soft-spoken in her wheelchair, her legs in casts, she recalled looking at missile fragments in her sister\u2019s head as she lay beside her, unable to move.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t imagine when someone suddenly tells you that your daughters were hit by an artillery shell. You enter a phase of breakdown,\u201d said their father, Omer Bakar.<\/p>\n

Madani remained in a hospital for six months for surgeries, battling infections and sometimes waiting for a doctor to be found after others fled.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are trying to forget the war,\u201d her father said, \u201cthe nightmare we finally woke up from.\u201d<\/p>\n

8 years old<\/h4>\n

When her house was struck in February 2025, Fatma Ageb\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Read more Texas school board to vote on required Bible readings in public education<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cIf it wasn\u2019t for Zeinab I wouldn\u2019t want to live. She\u2019s always calling for her sisters and father,\u201d Ageb said, wiping tears from her cheeks.<\/p>\n

The attack scarred her daughter\u2019s face and she lost her right eye. She wears a glass one in its place.<\/p>\n

Sitting beside her mother at a hospital and wearing a necklace with a character from the movie \u201cFrozen,\u201d Zeinab shyly held up a drawing she made and winced in pain while a doctor attended her wounds.<\/p>\n

Friends and relatives pooled money for the girl\u2019s operations but she needs more, and her mother doesn\u2019t know where she\u2019ll find the money.<\/p>\n

While she tries to be strong for her daughter, Zeinab\u2019s scars are a reminder of what they\u2019ve lost.<\/p>\n

A volunteer shaken<\/h4>\n

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.<\/p>\n

But in December 2023, he was caught in intense shelling after distributing food. He lost his right leg.<\/p>\n

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

\u201cI used to serve people. \u2026 Now I feel like I am a burden,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

And yet his volunteer work continues. Large metal bowls were stacked in his yard as he prepared to serve others their next meal.<\/p>\n

Fleeing sexual assault<\/h4>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The AP does not name people who have been sexually assaulted. The United Nations has called sexual violence one of the Sudan war\u2019s \u201cdefining features.\u201d<\/p>\n

Each night, the woman would cringe hearing fighters\u2019 footsteps approach the room where they were held. The men would point to the woman they wanted and take her away, she said.<\/p>\n

When they came for her daughters, 25 and 20, she told them to take her instead.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The RSF did not respond to request for comment.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

For more on Africa and development: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/africa-pulse<\/em><\/p>\n

The Associated Press receives financial support for global health and development coverage in Africa from the Gates Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP\u2019s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.<\/em><\/p>\n

Read more Europe\u2019s extreme heat would be impossible without climate change, scientists say<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As fighting continues in Sudan, survivors in Khartoum recount harrowing stories of loss, injury, and the struggle to move forward after the war.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18204,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-based-on-facts-either-observed-and-verified-directly-by-the-reporter-or-reported-and-verified-from-knowledgeable-sources","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nThe scars of war among survivors in Sudan - Silicon Valley Moving Post<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/siliconvalleymovingpost.com\/?p=18205\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The scars of war among survivors in Sudan - 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