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Dubai: Sudanese freelance photographer Faiz Abubakr has been documenting the crisis in his homeland since April 2023, when violence between military factions erupted.

The Sudanese military, led by Sudan's de facto president Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, has since been fighting the Rapid Support Forces, a paramilitary group commanded by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (commonly known as Hemedti).

Despite the immense risk, Abu Bakr felt compelled to take to the streets with his camera to document the catastrophe unfolding in his home city of Khartoum and capture the impact of the fierce rivalry between the generals on the suffering civilians.

“There are many questions about the lives of the people who fled every day from the scourge of war, their homes and belongings burned and they died in tragic ways,” Abu Bakr told Arab News. “These questions are about how they spent their days, abandoned by the roar of the planes and the explosions, and suffering the curse of displacement.”

According to the UN, Sudan currently faces the world's largest internal displacement crisis, with millions of people forced to flee their homes, including Abu Bakr, who initially fled to Egypt with his family.

A few months later, he returned to Sudan and worked for several news agencies before being wounded by RSF gunmen, he said. While recovering, he and his family moved to Kassala, in eastern Sudan, near the Eritrean border.

Abubakr’s clients include AFP, Le Monde and The New York Times. Before the conflict, he won the 2022 World Press Photo Award for “Africa, Single.” Now, he’s just trying to survive.

“The situation is much worse than before,” Abu Bakr said. “Life is very difficult due to lack of food and livelihoods. There is a threat of famine in all parts of the country.

Even now that he is a refugee, Abu Bakr continues to photograph the conflict around him, particularly its impact on civilians who have been forced to flee their homes.

“I try to document their stories, but for security reasons it is very difficult to take photos,” he said. “I lost everything during the war, including most of my photography equipment. My psychological state is getting worse.”

Abu Bakr is not alone. A new report from Doctors Without Borders, which operates in eight provinces of Sudan, says the conflict has taken a devastating toll on the health and well-being of Sudanese citizens.

“The population faces enormous levels of violence, has succumbed to widespread fighting and has survived repeated attacks, abuses and exploitation by warring parties,” the report said.

“The violence in Sudan shows no sign of abating,” Vicky Hawkins, MSF UK’s executive director, wrote in the report. “In fact, it is escalating at a rate that is outpacing our ability to process, document and respond to the daily incidents our teams and patients experience in Sudan.”

This report is based on medical and operational data collected by MSF from 15 April 2023 to 15 May 2023. It highlights patterns of violence and abuse observed by MSF teams and the devastating impact of fighting on public health.

In the report, anonymous medical workers at Al Nao Hospital in Omdurman, west of Khartoum, described the situation following recent shelling in residential areas of the city.

“About 20 people died on arrival. Some arrived already dead,” the health worker said. “Most arrived with their arms or legs hanging off, already amputated. Some arrived with just small patches of skin holding their limbs together.

“A patient came in with an amputated leg, and a caregiver followed behind him, holding the amputated leg in his hand.”

According to MSF, Al Nao Hospital treated 6,776 patients with injuries resulting from armed violence between August 15, 2023 and April 30 this year, an average of 26 per day.

“After 15 months of conflict, the warring parties have shown a total lack of respect for civilian life,” Kyle McNally, MSF project coordinator who was recently stationed in Nyala, a city in southwestern Sudan, told Arab News.

“These are the people they claim to represent and fight for. Instead, this is a war against the Sudanese people in the way they are conducting hostilities. We see very blatant violations of the protection of civilians and attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure.

“Hospitals and medical staff were not harmed. We see numerous attacks on medical facilities. Hospital systems and medical systems were completely destroyed by the fighting.”

According to the UN, Sudan is facing a deepening food crisis, with an estimated 25 million people suffering from acute malnutrition. Of these, more than 14 million are children, 3 million of whom are under the age of five. They are in dire need of humanitarian assistance.

Violence has forced at least 10 million people from their homes, according to new figures from the UN migration agency.

“The conflict in Sudan has become one of the largest migration crises in the world,” Alyona Sinenko, the International Committee of the Red Cross’s regional spokesperson for Africa, told Arab News in Nairobi.

“We're talking about a quarter of the country's population that has been displaced. People have lost their homes and they have lost access to the essentials for survival.”

In particular, the collapse of Sudan's agricultural sector due to the displacement of farmers has exacerbated food insecurity. “Food production has been hit hard, and we are seeing a worsening food crisis,” Sinenko said.

“We have hundreds of people calling us in desperation because they don't know what has happened to their loved ones. More and more families are being torn apart and have lost the ability to contact each other.”

During the first half of 2024, the ICRC worked with the Sudan Red Crescent to provide emergency assistance and essential services. However, efforts were hampered by the security situation, administrative difficulties and difficulties in accessing communities.

This phenomenon is most evident in Sudan's Darfur region, where there are allegations of ethnic cleansing and attacks on hospitals.

“We saw the entire city of Nyala, which was the second most populous city in Sudan, completely destroyed,” said MSF’s McNally.

“The entire northern half of the city is almost completely destroyed. Everywhere you look you see a complete lack of basic services. There has been virtually no international humanitarian response in this area.

“You can really see the hardships that people are facing. There are people who are left behind, and there are IDP camps in the surrounding areas with hundreds of thousands of people. There are a lot of people who are desperate and there is very little support available to them at the moment.”

According to Abu Bakr, Sudanese civilians suffer particularly badly in areas controlled by the Rapid Support Forces, a paramilitary group that now controls Khartoum, Al Jazeera, Kordofan and much of the vast western region of Darfur.

Of particular concern are reports of sexual and gender-based violence across the country, particularly in Darfur.

A survey conducted by MSF between July and December 2023 of 135 survivors of sexual violence treated by MSF teams in refugee camps in Chad found that 90% had been abused by armed assailants, 50% had been abused at home and 40% had been raped by multiple assailants.

Abu Bakr recalls being distressed by the sight of his neighbors in Khartoum abandoning their homes, leaving behind places and possessions that were integral to their identity, without knowing whether they would return. He did not believe that he, too, would leave the city of his birth.

Now all that remains are memories and photographs of the home he hopes to one day reclaim.

“I see the place living the person rather than the person living the place,” Abu Bakr said. “The images and scenes from my home have never faded from my memory. I want to go back there again.”