Sudan: For the few who couldn’t flee this neighbourhood in Khartoum North life will never be the same
It has only been a week since the army reclaimed pockets of Khartoum North – the once bustling north-eastern wing of Sudan’s tri-city capital, locally known as Khartoum Bahri.
The hum of warplanes and crack of gunfire still punctuate life here. But the gunfire is now outgoing, and the warplanes are searching for enemy targets that have been pushed further back.
A year-and-a-half long siege by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) is now over for some. But the scars still mark the streets, the homes and the few families still in them.
Hundreds of thousands of civilians have fled Khartoum Bahri to safer states within Sudan, neighbouring countries and beyond.
There was a haunting emptiness when we arrived in Halfaya – an old tight-knit neighbourhood where families live for generations, expanding to only move across the narrow dirt roads.
Sudan’s army reclaimed pockets of Khartoum North last week
Today, overgrown vines reach into the shattered windows of cars abandoned in the yards of their owners.
Inside, the homes are overturned, looted and destroyed by bullets and missiles.
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All that was left behind – photo albums, pencil cases, clothes and books – mean everything to a select few. Many left hoping it would only be a short while before they could return.
Faiza says she had to hide her daughter to protect her from rape by RSF soldiers
But not everyone could leave.
“We don’t have a single penny to leave with. We didn’t have anything and never expected this,” Faiza Ishaq tells us in front of her home.
“I don’t have any family here – all my people left. I’m just with my two children and husband.”
Other than a handful of remaining neighbours, we are the first civilians Faiza has seen in close to 18 months of war.
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‘They started killing people in the streets’
She collapsed into sobs on my shoulder soon after we happily hugged each other hello. In a moment, her new sense of relief was overshadowed by months of deep horror and grief.
“Since they came a year and a half ago, I developed a tremor in my whole body. My hands shake so much I can’t eat without spilling food,” says Faiza, visibly trembling.
“We have been living in such terror – they can jump the wall at 2am. They hurl insults at us and threaten to take my 12-year-old daughter.”
She says their neighbours were killed by the RSF while fighting to protect their two sisters from rape. Her utmost fear was that her young daughter would be next in line.
“They would say to me ‘give me your daughter to marry or we’ll take her’. When they would come to the house, I locked her in the bathroom.”
The little food and support they could find under siege came from around the corner. Her neighbour Sumaya has turned her house into a community kitchen.
With the markets emptied, the chicken coup in the corner of her yard and grains bought with donations raised from Sudanese people abroad were used to feed as many remaining families as possible in the harshest of conditions.
“The fear and trauma have made us sick. We were never like this – we are finished,” says Sumaya.
“We have all lost weight and feel weak because they could knock the door at any moment. If someone knocked on the door without saying my name I felt gripped by fear.”
Firas has malaria for the fourth time since the war started
As we stood there and spoke in the heat of the day, one of the community volunteers, Firas, had to go and lie down.
He has malaria for the fourth time since the war started. Even in the wake of this military gain, movement and medical treatment in the capital is severely limited.
“I faint two to three times in a month from a lack of nutrition,” says Firas.
He has survived army airstrikes, RSF harassment and the dangerous work on electrical cables he has had to risk to keep the power on in the neighbourhood.
“It really was kill or be killed. We told our families that if we die, just forgive us.”
At least 50 people, including 33 children, have been killed in southern Sudan after a drone attack by paramilitary forces hit a nursery in South Kordofan state.
Sudan Doctors’ Network says paramedics on the scene in the town of Kalogi were also targeted by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in a “second unexpected attack”.
Rights group Emergency Lawyers reported a “third civilian site” near the previous two attacks was also targeted.
The death toll is expected to be higher, but communication blackouts have made it difficult to confirm the full number of casualties.
Emergency Lawyers says the strikes are a “flagrant violation of international humanitarian law, including the protection of civilians, especially children, and vital civilian infrastructure.”
UNICEF has urged both parties to stop the attacks immediately and allow safe access for humanitarian aid.
“Killing children in their school is a horrific violation of children’s rights,” said UNICEF representative for Sudan Sheldon Yett.
“Children should never pay the price of conflict.”
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The attack on the nursery is among the latest in the two-year conflict between the RSF and Sudan’s military, where the focus has recently shifted to the oil-rich Kordofan states.
A photo released by UNICEF shows displaced children and families from al-Fashir. (Mohammed Jammal/UNICEF via AP)
Hundreds of civilians have been killed in the last few weeks as fighting shifted from Darfur, following the RSF’s violent takeover of the city of Al Fashir, which was marked with civilians being executed, rapes, sexual assaults and other atrocities.
Thousands managed to escape the violence, but thousands more are trapped or feared killed.
Grab from RSF social media channels in Al Fashir, Sudan
Meanwhile, Sudanese military aerial strikes last weekend killed at least 48 people, mostly civilians, in South Kordofan.
The RSF has also accused the military of carrying out a drone strike on the border with Chad, posting a video showing billowing black smoke.
The Associated Press has been unable to verify the video or whether there were any casualties, while Sudan’s military also hasn’t commented.
The RSF and the Sudanese military have been fighting for power over the country since 2023, which has seen more than 40,000 people killed, according to the World Health Organisation, although the real death toll is expected to be higher. 12 million people have been displaced.
The 3D picture we’re shown of Maryam’s skull shows a gaping hole.
It’s astonishing the young girl from Gaza even survived an Israeli bombing near her home.
But she’s sitting up in her hospital bed in the Jordanian capital Amman, as we look on and she’s smiling and joking during a call with her father who remains in the Palestinian territory.
“I’m okay,” she says cheerily, “how are you?”
She’s heard overnight there’s been severe flooding in Gaza and the tents and makeshift shelters which tens of thousands are living in, are now soaked and under water.
But her father is focussed on how his 12-year-old daughter is feeling ahead of yet another life-saving brain operation.
Maryam is a rarity.
She is one of a few hundred patients who’ve been allowed by the Israeli authorities to leave the Gaza Strip to receive critical medical help since the October 2025 agreement signed between Israel and Hamas, which was aimed at ending hostilities.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) says they’ve identified nearly 16,000 medical cases needing urgent critical care outside Gaza.
WHO data documented a total of 217 patients who left Gaza for medical care in other countries between the dates of 13 October and 26 November 2025.
Since then, Israel’s Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) has said a further 72 patients and caregivers from Gaza have departed the Israeli-occupied area for Jordan.
But behind them, they left a long queue of ill and wounded people in desperate need of the sort of specialised medical help Maryam Ibrahim is receiving in Jordan.
Alex Crawford and Dr Samer Elbabaa
Having survived the bombing and having survived the craniectomy (removing her fractured skull), Maryam’s next challenge was surviving the wait to receive permission to leave Gaza for the surgery which offered her a chance of long-term survival.
She waited almost half a year for this operation: an operation considered vital.
Without it, Maryam’s brain was unprotected. Any stumble or accident risked irreversibly injuring her brain and negatively impacting her neurological functions – a risk which was considerably heightened given where she’s living.
The Palestine Children’s Relief Fund (PCRF) which has funded her medical care in Jordan says they’ve “witnessed at first hand the catastrophic toll of this conflict on children’s health and well-being.
“Thousands have been orphaned, maimed or left with lifelong trauma. Entire hospitals and health centres have been destroyed leaving an entire population of children without access to even the most basic medical care.”
While humanitarian organisations continue to encounter challenges in organising evacuations from Gaza, two British surgeons were amongst a group of medics refused permission by the Israeli authorities to enter the territory.
Dr Victoria Rose, a plastic and reconstructive surgeon with the IDEALS charity, told Sky News: “WHO calculated that in 2025, only 47% of emergency medical teams were granted entry to Gaza.
“This is at a time when hundreds of local doctors have been detained by the IDF with many still unaccounted for. Gaza does not have the manpower to cope with the numbers of injured.”
Maryam
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Maryam’s case received widespread publicity after the intervention of the popular American children’s educator and YouTuber Rachel Griffin Accurso known as “Ms Rachel”.
She highlighted her case by talking to the little girl via Instagram after Maryam posted about how she was being bullied for her unusual appearance because of her cranial injury.
Maryam’s family realise she’s been unusually fortunate to receive this specialised care, but they know too that as soon as Maryam is well enough, the little girl will be returned to Gaza and an unpredictable future.
The Israeli authorities continue to insist via X that they are helping to organise humanitarian aid into Gaza and are committed to “facilitating a humanitarian-medical response” – which includes establishing field hospitals.
They have repeatedly suggested that it is the lack of coordination on the part of various countries and organisations which is the issue – but this runs counter to what multiple humanitarian groups and individuals have experienced.
Germany’s parliament has voted to reintroduce voluntary military service, but getting Gen Z recruits could prove tricky.
Across the country, students gathered to demonstrate against what they fear will be a return to conscription.
In Berlin, they held signs saying, “You can’t have our lives if we don’t eat your lies” and “peace is power”.
While most demonstrators were in their late teens or twenties, some parents also turned out with their younger children.
One mother held a placard declaring: “You can’t have my son”.
The new plan means from January, all 18-year-olds will be sent a questionnaire about their fitness and willingness to serve.
Men must fill it in, while for women it will be voluntary.
In the future, if the numbers of volunteers are too low, then parliament could trigger conscription at times of war or in emergencies.
It’s an idea which horrifies many in the crowd.
“None of us want to die for a country that doesn’t really care about us,” Levi tells me.
He says the government has ignored their calls for climate protections and better social conditions, so he feels no allegiance to them.
Levi
I ask: “If Germany was attacked, who do you think should defend it if Gen Z don’t want to?”
“Why don’t the people that started the war do it? I don’t see why the older people shouldn’t go to war. I mean, a lot of them already were in the army,” he replies.
17-year-old Sara agrees, declaring: “I would not be willing to die for any country.”
“I don’t think it’s right to send children or anyone against their will into the military, because war is just wrong,” she says.
“I’m never going to join the military and if Germany is attacked, I’ll just go somewhere else where there’s no war.”
Sara
While the government says the system will be voluntary for as long as possible, from 2027 all 18-year-old men will have to have a medical examination so the government can see who is fit to serve.
German defence minister Boris Pistorius says the mandatory medical is needed so that in the event of an attack, Germany would not waste time confirming “who is operationally capable as a homeland protector and who is not”.
The move is a massive cultural shift for Germany, which suspended mandatory military conscription on 1 July 2011.
“From my friends no one wants to volunteer because we don’t want to fight for a problem that’s not really ours. We didn’t start the problems, they [the government] did,” says Silas.
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Sky’s Europe Correspondent Siobhan Robbins investigates.
The change is a direct reaction to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine
Despite Moscow’s denials, NATO’s chief has warned Russia could be able to attack a member country in the next four to five years.
I ask 19-year-old Lola if she’s thinks Russia is a threat?
“It could be, maybe. However, I think there are more important issues, especially like social ones, than war,” she says.
Lola
Her friend, 28-year-old Balthasar, goes further, saying: “A country being able to attack isn’t the same as a country planning to attack.
“The track record of Russia has been to attempt at least diplomatic resolution, cooperation, and I think those are the right approaches to take in international politics, opposed to sabre-rattling, which the German government has resorted to.”
The German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, has said he wants to build the strongest army in Europe.
Germany currently has around 184,000 soldiers and wants to boost that by over 80,000 in the next decade.
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Volunteers are being offered incentives like a monthly wage of more than €2,000 (£1,750).
Despite this, a survey earlier this year found 81% of Gen Z wouldn’t fight for Germany.
In contrast, many of the older generation supported conscription.
At the Berlin protest, 17-year-old Valentin was the only person we met who reluctantly agreed to fight.
Valentin
“When we are attacked, then yes [I would fight], but when we are attacking other countries, then no,” he says.
Germany isn’t the only country looking for reinforcements, last month France announced a new military service for over-18s.
Currently, 10 EU countries already have compulsory military service.
While others like Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany are opting for voluntary schemes.
The German plan still must be signed off by parliament’s upper house later this month before it’s expected to start in January.
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