“ I fled Zamzam camp with a child in my arms and luggage on my head ”

The 700,000 inhabitants of the Sudan Zamzam camp were already one of the most demonstrative people in the world when they were attacked by paramilitary fighters last week.

Two decades of conflicts in the Darfur region, which intensified after the civil war broke out throughout Sudan two years ago, meant that they had already fled their homes to find security and shelter.

They have gradually started to rebuild their lives in Zamzam, the largest Sudan camp for internal displaced people.

But any feeling of stability has been turned upside down when the camp was ravaged by intense soil and aerial assault.

Zamzam was attacked by the Rapid Forces paramilitary forces (RSF), which tried to seize the neighboring city of El-Fasher of its rivals, the Sudanese army.

The RSF denied atrocity reports in Zamzam, but confirmed that it had returned to camp.

Following the attack, Zamzam is “completely destroyed,” said North Darfur Minister Ibrahim Khater said the BBC Newsday program.

“No one is there,” he said.

Among the thousands of people who fled Zamzam, Fathiya Mohammed, 28, had been at camp for three months.

She walked barefoot for four days before reaching the city of Tawila.

“I was carrying a child on my back, another in my arms and luggage on my head,” she told the BBC.

She lost her husband during the chaos of the attack and still does not know where he is.

The family was attacked by thieves during the trip to Tawila, Ms. Mohammed said, and they endured exhaustion, hunger and thirst.

Medical charity doctors without borders (MSF) claim that tens of thousands of people have fled Zamzam to Tawila since the attack.

Saadiya Adam left camp with her children aged two and five after his fortune house was destroyed.

“They burned my house in Zamzam and they burned my sheep,” said Adam, who had been living in Zamzam for two months.

“Everything I had was burned. I don’t have anything left.”

Images filmed by an independent journalist working for the BBC show thousands of people displaced internally entering Tawila on foot, truck and donkey cart.

These arrivals are faced with outdated installations – MSF said that more than two days, more than 20,000 people asked for the hospital treatment it operated in Tawila.

“We see many people injured by bullets, she becomes routine,” said the chief nurse salmon Tiphaine.

“Yesterday, it was a seven -month -old baby who just looked at and couldn’t cry – she had gunshot wounds under the chin and on the shoulder.”

A patient from Tawila Hospital described is attacked in Zamzam.

“We were six of us, we met RSF,” said Issa Abdullah.

“Three vehicles opened fire on us. They hit me on my head. A bullet approached my mouth. I’m fine now, but there are others in the worst condition.”

Hussein Khamis was killed in his leg during the attack.

“After being injured, there was no one to wear me,” he said.

Mr. Khamis managed to reach a neighboring hospital despite his injury, but he “found no one, everyone had fled”.

Finally, he managed to obtain an elevator towards Tawila. Like Ms. Mohammed, he says he was stolen along the way.

The RSF did not comment on these specific allegations.

MSF said that he had received more than 170 people with shots and breathless injuries in Tawila since the attack, 40% of whom were women and girls.

“People tell us that many injured and vulnerable people could not make the trip to Tawila and have been left. Almost all those who are talking about said that they have lost at least one family member during the attack,” Marion Ramstein, Coordinator of the MSF project in Tawila, told Tawila.

Zamzam was created in 2004 to house internal displaced people fleeing ethnic violence in Darfur.

His seizure would be strategically significant for the RSF, which lost control of the capital of Sudan last month, Khartoum.

The RSF remains in control of a large part of the western Sudan, including most of the Darfur.

This week, the group announced its intention to launch a parallel government in the parts of Sudan in the controls, which increases fears that Sudan could finally separate in two.

Security, at least for the moment, Ms. Mohammed has thought about the immense loss that this war caused like her like her.

“We want war to stop,” she said. “Peace is the most important thing.”