Sudanese families describe their search for sanctuary as the brutal civil war rages on

In total, 11 million Sudanese have been forced from their homes because of the country’s bitter civil war between the army and a rogue militia. Up to 150,000 are feared dead and millions more face unimaginable trauma. In her third report from the front lines and with support from the Pulitzer Center, special correspondent Leila Molana-Allen followed some families searching for sanctuary.

Read the Full Transcript

Amna Nawaz: A dam in a remote part of Sudan collapsed this weekend. The United Nations says at least 20 villages were destroyed and at least 30 people were killed, although the death toll could be much higher.

The dam is about 25 miles north of Port Sudan and provided the city located on the Red Sea with drinking water. Port Sudan is where many civilians fled because of the country’s bitter civil war between the army and a rogue militia, the Rapid Support Forces. In total, 11 million Sudanese have been forced from their homes in what’s now the world’s largest displacement crisis.

Up to 150,000 people are feared dead and millions more face unimaginable trauma.

In her third report from the front lines in Sudan with support from the Pulitzer Center, special correspondent Leila Molana-Allen follows along with some of the families desperately searching for sanctuary.

Leila Molana-Allen: A perilous journey inching along the front line, with only the occasional cover of the mountains.

As we’re led through the rough sands by an armed escort of Sudanese soldiers, black plumes of smoke from fresh shelling rise through the air. But we’re not going to the battle zone. We’re here to meet Sudanese families trying to outrun the conflict.

To get out, they have to make it through this treacherous strip alone. This is the northernmost point of Omdurman, where displaced people arrive having escaped from front line and RSF-held territory. We’re wearing protective equipment because in recent days the RSF has been shelling this area.

Even as people make it here after their dangerous journey, they’re still not safe yet. An exhausted mother who’s made it here with her baby and toddler.

Iman, Displaced (through interpreter): The fighting is very intense in our area. There’s no food there. We have nothing to eat.

Leila Molana-Allen: She’s at the very end of her strength. Her eyes glazed, she sits, staring, a brief moment of rest before they have to move on again.

Iman (through interpreter): We’re sick, hungry and we have small children. We are so tired of this war. We won’t survive. Living like this is so very hard.

Leila Molana-Allen: All these families arrived just this morning. They are a few of the millions of civilians traversing the country, forced from their homes by this bloody war. If they’re lucky, they can afford a seat in a minibus or a donkey cart, but, for most, it’s an arduous journey on foot, covering hundreds of miles in the baking heat.

They’re running from the greatest of horrors, looting, killing, rape, at the hands of Rapid Support Forces militiamen. At this construction site in Qadarif, the air is thick with the trauma of what they have endured. There are thousands of people staying in this makeshift reception center.

They’re practically in the open air, completely exposed to the heat of the day and the wind at night. They’re hoping for a spot in an official displacement camp, but with so many people arriving, there just isn’t space, and many of them have fled from other displacement camps that have now been overrun by the RSF.

In the past few weeks, the RSF’s latest offensive has swept through the southern state of Sennar, sending its residents running for their lives. For most here, it’s far from the first time they have had to flee. This is the fifth time Salma’s family has been displaced by this war. Four of her six kids are younger than 5.

The journey was long and rough, sleeping on a blanket on the roadside each night, fending off snakes and scorpions.

Salma Nasser, Displaced (through interpreter): Ten days on the road from place to place until we got here. When they said they were hungry, I told them, we’re almost there. When they said they were too tired, I told them we’re almost there. I would point and promise them, look, your father will be there when we arrive.

Leila Molana-Allen: But their father was not at the end of the long road. He stayed behind to earn money for his family when they first fled. Salma hasn’t heard from him since.

The attacks happen so fast, family members are often separated. When the RSF descended on their first displacement shelter, her neighbor was out trying to find work. So Salma grabbed the woman’s teenage daughters along with her own kids and ran.

Salma Nasser (through interpreter): I couldn’t leave them behind. Until now, there’s no news about their mother, not even a phone call.

Leila Molana-Allen: With no work to be had, they survive on the kindness of others.

Volunteers distribute one meal a day to the families and locals from the city bring what they have to share. But now fears of an attack on Qadarif are growing. Salma doesn’t know if she has the strength to run again.

Salma Nasser (through interpreter): A few weeks ago there were shells, machine guns and snipers. We had to sleep under the beds. If the RSF comes here, I am not going anywhere. I will die here. I can’t bear to be displaced yet again.

Leila Molana-Allen: With nowhere to house the onslaught of people, schools, closed since the beginning of the war, have become shelters. At this girls school, students were clamoring to continue classes, but didn’t want to make the temporary residents homeless. So the principal found a compromise.

The girls arrive at the crack of dawn and take their lessons in the garden. They have even made space for an extra 250 displaced pupils. Inside the school buildings, families living in limbo. Amuna (ph) has been here six months with her four toddlers. At night, up to 200 people pack these two small rooms.

So this is where you have been living?

Al Nour Habib, Displaced: Yes, this is the place where I live. This is my family.

Leila Molana-Allen: Al Nour’s family are staying in the classroom next door. He says they have seen little international support.

Al Nour Habib: They have forgotten us, because we didn’t see them on the ground usually. We see people in Syria. We see people in Ukraine and something like that. But I think that this is Africa or something like this. They let us down.

Now we have two months we didn’t receive anything, especially food.

Leila Molana-Allen: You haven’t received any aid in two months?

Al Nour Habib: Yes. No. Yes, two months.

Leila Molana-Allen: And how are you feeling about the future for your children, for Sudan?

Al Nour Habib: Yes, the future of my children is very dark and it is very sorrowful. We have to believe in, we are our one nation, and to look for the country, yes, as a home for us all.

Leila Molana-Allen: The recently opened displacement camp nearby can’t even begin to host this number of people. Aid agencies on the ground say, without more funding and access to the areas hit hardest, there’s little more they can do.

At schools across the country, similar scenes. These families have just fled Tuti, a tiny island in the center of Khartoum state. Fleeing RSF territory is extremely dangerous. For Mohamed’s family, facing daily shelling and shooting and arbitrary arrest by militiamen, the risk of staying any longer was even worse.

Mohamed Ahmed Al-Madani, Displaced (through interpreter): They were firing shells, which hit houses and people. The bullets were the worst because they were everywhere. There was no water, no electricity for 11 months. People sent us medicine from outside, but the militiamen confiscated them. People died because of the lack of treatment.

Leila Molana-Allen: Both Mohamed and his wife have diabetes. It was time to go, but only if they could afford the RSF’s hefty exit bribes. It cost him nearly $1,000 to get his small family out. life savings he was lucky to have, unlike many others.

No one knows what the future holds now. And at night, the children go back to Tuti.

Mohamed Ahmed Al-Madani (through interpreter): The children are badly affected by the war. They know the difference between the sounds of bullets and shells. They’re psychologically unstable and scared. All they talk about is the militias, even in their games.

Leila Molana-Allen: Many are fleeing evils even darker than bombs and hunger. Maha, whose name we have changed to protect her, was out running errands in her hometown of Omdurman when a gunfight broke out. In seconds, her husband was dead and the RSF had kidnapped her.

For six months, she was held captive, subjected to horrifying abuse.

Maha, Displaced (through interpreter): There was beating, sexual assault and death. Everything was done to us.

Leila Molana-Allen: Finally, they gave her a choice: “Work for the RSF or we will kill your children.”

Maha (through interpreter): That’s where the torture and training began. They trained us girls. My role was to be a spy, to gather information for them. Because my children were in their hands, I had no choice but to work with them.

Leila Molana-Allen: Eventually, she was caught. Now she spends her days in a protection center in the army zone, dreaming helplessly of her three young kids.

Maha (through interpreter): Until now, I don’t know if my children are alive or dead.

Leila Molana-Allen: I tell Maha, we should stop if it’s too much. “No,” she insists. “People need to know what’s happening.”

Maha (through interpreter): Many other people have experienced similar things. I am not the first girl, nor will I be the last. Some girls were raped in front of their parents. All Sudanese have been psychologically damaged by the RSF. We live in fear.

Leila Molana-Allen: With the war still raging, there’s little space for healing. Escape, survive, escape, survive, a nightmarish cycle playing out on repeat for Sudanese families who never know if their next stop will be their safe place or their last.

The distances displaced Sudanese families have to cover to escape the fighting are vast. And they’re often taking the long way around the mountains to try and avoid the shifting front lines. Everyone we speak to is telling us that when the RSF assaults a new town or village, they attack so fast and so brutally that civilians have to drop everything and run.

Even those who make it as far as Port Sudan, the military capital on the Red Sea, are little better off. Children arrive in dire condition on the outskirts of the city. Even those who look relatively healthy turn out to have malnutrition.

And even for those with some cash, most food is unaffordable now. The price of meat has risen by six times in the past two months; 75-year-old Khadija has been trying to make money at the central market since she arrived here from her besieged hometown. A sympathetic local gave her some cash to start a business, but the going is tough.

Khadija Akbar Elias, Displaced (through interpreter): I’m currently living in a house without a door or window. Rain and wind are over our heads. We have no money.

We fled and left everything behind. We only escaped with our lives. All I own is this shawl that I’m wearing. Do I look like I know the price of a can of oil now? I don’t have the budget to even ask about it, let alone buy it.

Leila Molana-Allen: Homeless, penniless, constantly trying to outrun the next attack. This conflict, which has devastated the lives of millions of Sudanese, shows little sign of slowing on its path of destruction.

For the “PBS News Hour,” I’m Leila Molana-Allen in Port Sudan.