War crime fears in Sudan as refugee camps treat hundreds of shot children
Hundreds of children have suffered bullet wounds while fleeing Sudan in a clear sign that war crimes are being committed in the country’s civil war.
Some 24 per cent of the nearly 2,600 people treated for gunshot wounds after arriving at a major field hospital over the border in Chad were children under five, the French medical NGO Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said.
Abdul Latif, a nine-year-old boy who arrived at the hospital in the border town of Adre, had been shot in the back by a sniper while playing with his friends before school in Geneina, the capital of Sudan’s West Darfur state. The sniper fired a single bullet, hitting his spinal cord and leaving him paralysed from the waist down.
“He was hit by gunfire, and then his father had to carry him across the border by foot,” said Tom Shelton, from Humanity & Inclusion (HI).
Sudan is being ripped apart by a savage war that broke out in April last year, when simmering tensions between the country’s armed forces and a notorious paramilitary group, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), erupted into open fighting in the capital Khartoum.
Chad has borne the brunt of the influx in refugees, in what the UNHCR has called “the largest internally displaced population ever reported”.
The conflict has forced over 600,000 refugees to flee into the landlocked country, with more than 115,000 people making the arduous journey across the border this year alone.
Mr Shelton told The Telegraph he was struck by the sheer number of young children who had suffered bullet wounds.
“Most of the people that I spoke to had experienced some kind of indiscriminate attacks on the places they were living… so many people are walking around on crutches,” he said.
The numbers of Sudanese refugees arriving with severe injuries, such as those caused by gunshots, is placing a heavy burden on the field hospital, which lacks the resources to meet the needs of all the arrivals.
“Some of them have these huge external surgical fixators on their legs to hold the bone in place… they’re sleeping in a really small, hot shelter with poor hygiene and open wounds… the harsh reality is that the specific needs of these people are simply not being met,” said Mr Shelton.
Humanity & Inclusion (HI) has been giving Abdul Latif rehabilitation sessions for months.
“It was very sad, because honestly, it was very unclear whether he would walk again,” Mr Shelton said.
“He’s now living in an environment where he can’t really use a wheelchair. Nothing is easily usable for him.”
HI operates in Adré at the MSF France hospital, and in the Metché, Aboutengue and Farchana camps, where they have a team of physiotherapists to treat both inpatients and those already discharged with rehabilitation needs, including those with limb fractures, amputations and burns.
When he arrived in eastern Chad last October, Mr Shelton said that he was surprised when he was met with NGOs who simply didn’t have time to deal with the patients in desperate need of rehabilitation.
“They said: ‘This is a massive emergency. We’re overwhelmed. We can’t deal with these people with these specific needs that they have. We have to deal with it later’,” said Mr Shelton.
A recent UN humanitarian appeal for the country received just 16 per cent of the humanitarian funds required.
“There’s political will, but a lot of that is linked to media coverage and sustained communication,” said Mr Shelton. “Sudan is not getting nearly enough of the attention it needs… it’s a tragedy.”
The plight of Sudanese children is continuing to spiral.
Antony Spalton, chief of Unicef Sudan’s Darfur field office, said that he is particularly concerned about the children trapped in the deepening crisis in the city of El Fasher, Darfur’s capital, that has now reached boiling point.
Home to 1.8 million people, if El Fasher falls to the RSF – the successors to the notorious Janjaweed militias responsible for the ‘Darfur genocide’ in the 2000s – a massacre may become inevitable.
Killing and maiming children in conflict is one of the six grave violations condemned by the United Nations. Others include the use of children in armed groups, rape or other grave sexual violence, abduction and the denial of humanitarian access for children.
“We’re talking about 750,000 children in El Fasher who are on the front line… we’ve probably seen all of the six violations against children here and we are highly alarmed about it,” Mr Spalton said.
“To put things in perspective, in 2023, we verified about 1,200 cases of killing and maiming children across Sudan,” he said.
“Since May, we have had about 400 cases of killing and maiming of children in El Fasher alone.”
More than 10 million children in Sudan have been within five kilometres of the active warzone, including being close to gunfire and shelling, over the past year of the war, according to analysis by Save the Children.
Mr Spalton – currently based in Farchana, the Chadian border town – said that they are receiving around 600 Sudanese refugees seeking safety each day, mainly those fleeing El Flasher.
“More recently, the arrivals have been saying they’re hungry, which means that children are missing out on meals,” he said.
One mother, Fatime Deffa Ibrahim, was forced to flee to Chad with her 10 and 12-year old daughters when the RSF raided their home in Ardamatta in Sudan.
“When I arrived in Adré, I couldn’t find work and the food distributions weren’t enough to feed us,” she told MSF. “The RSF looted everything we had. I spend my days making these bricks. For 1,000 bricks I’m paid 300 CFA francs (0.38p).”
Mr Spalton said that NGOs were “struggling” to get aid across the border to Sudan.
The escalation in tensions pushed the Sudanese government in February to sever the access points along the border with Chad from six to one.
“With a limited availability of trucks and huge distances to transport for supplies… we’re not able to get the volume of supplies we need,” said Mr Spalton.
“We have to get therapeutic food to feed the children with acute malnutrition… especially ahead of the rainy season, because access is going to be even more challenging,” he added.
“If we can’t, those children will die.”
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