A ‘dystopian nightmare’ in battered Darfur

Hasssamier Cherif Ibrahim (centre), a 30-year-old Arabic teacher from Darfur fled with her three children in the middle of the night. — @2023 The New York Times Company

THE gunmen arrived at dawn on motorcycles, horses and in cars. For hours afterward, they fired into houses, rampaged through shops and razed clinics, witnesses said, in a frenzied attack that upended life in El Geneina, a city in the Darfur region of Sudan.

The violence in mid-May, which killed at least 280 people in two days, came just hours after two military factions that have been battling for control of Sudan signed a commitment to protect civilians and allow the flow of humanitarian aid.