On April 15, 2023, war broke out in Sudan. Within hours, the fighting had engulfed Khartoum, the capital, where my parents lived. Death, displacement, and violence spread swiftly across the country. Almost three years later, more than 13 million people have been displaced from their homes, and around 400,000 are estimated to have been killed.
I was in Johannesburg, where I am posted as Africa correspondent for Sky News, when I got the news of the war: text messages of loud explosions and gunfire being heard in Khartoum. I frantically called my parents. They sounded quietly and deeply shaken; explosions echoed in the background. I became singularly focused on reaching Sudan, getting them out, and reporting on the war. My team and I traced a flow of people leaving Khartoum on evacuation flights to Djibouti and other groups fleeing Port Sudan by ship to Saudi Arabia.
We traveled to Jeddah. On April 26, 2023, a Saudi Arabian naval ship pulled into the Port of Jeddah, ferrying people escaping the war in Khartoum—a 10 hour journey across the Red Sea. I boarded the ship and started interviewing the passengers. I was wrapping up a live, on-air interview with a family when I felt eyes on me.
I turned around and saw my uncle looking back at me from across the crowded deck. I had no idea he had made it out of Khartoum safely. I ran to him. We hugged and cried with joy and relief. A wave of warmth swept over the weary evacuees who witnessed the chance encounter. If only for a moment, the despair and dread of war had been interrupted by hope.
War broke out after talks between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary force commanded by General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo—better known as Hemedti—collapsed over whether, and on what terms, the RSF would be folded into the national army.
After a popular uprising toppled the dictator Omar al-Bashir, Burhan and Dagalo governed together within a…
