'In El Fasher you only face death' Civilians flee besieged city

Aisha had wanted to stay with her husband when the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) laid siege to the Sudanese city of El Fasher earlier this year.

- Zeinab Mohammed Salih SHAKRA

But as the shelling and bombing escalated, and supplies of essentials ran low, she was left with no choice.

"There's nothing there, no water to drink or food to eat," said the 31-yearold, who is married to a soldier in the regular army, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), and did not want to give her last name. "I will never return." Her escape through the city's western gate - the only one not controlled by the RSF was fraught with risk.

"Several times when I tried to board a lorry a shell landed nearby, and I ran away," said Aisha, from the relative safety of Tawila, a town controlled by a rebel group that has - for now-stayed neutral in Sudan's civil war. "I came back week after week to try again." Aid workers estimate that hundreds of thousands of people have followed the same route in recent months, taking a road that follows a V-shape around the Zamzam refugee camp then runs west to Tawila and beyond.