'Here, there is no future'

Almost a year since conflict reignited in Sudan, its terrified people are crossing borders to Chad and beyond. An increasing number are trying to reach Europe as food supplies dwindle in the refugee camps and the eyes of the world look elsewhere

- Mark Townsend, Guardian reporters

They burst into the room, yanking the boy out from under a bed. His eyes wide open with terror, they put a gun to his temple. Two shots. Nadifa Ismail ran towards the body, but the intruders shoved the mother out of her home. Moments later, armed men set it ablaze, cremating her child's body, destroying everything she had.

Weeks later, on 28 February in Sudan's Darfur region, Ismail, her clothing streaked red with dust, passed the paramilitary group who had executed her 16-year-old son.

"Hopefully, it is the last time I will see them," she said. "They beat me too." Ismail was the 212th person that day to make it through the border crossing and into the town of Adré in eastern Chad. Like those who had gone before, the 38-year-old offered detailed testimony that fresh atrocities are happening in Darfur, a vast region in the west of Sudan.

The latest arrivals offer further evidence of ethnic cleansing in Darfur's unfolding dystopian nightmare.

Women raped in front of their children, daughters raped in front of their mothers. Boys shot in the street. Others dragged away and never seen again.

Their statements crystallise concerns that the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) - the powerful paramilitary group in Sudan that killed Ismail's son along with other allied Arab militia, remain intent on completing the genocide against the Masalit community, a darker-skinned African tribe, which began 20 years ago. Latest accounts describe a region sealed off with innumerable checkpoints and roving RSF kill squads.

For the first seven weeks of 2024, Ismail, a Masalit, and her surviving children, five girls, lived on the run, dodging the militias. They escaped as Sudan's civil war nears its first anniversary in April, a conflict that is only intensifying as foreign powers wrestle for influence within the strategic African nation.