Refugees with gunshot wounds stream in from Darfur after violence in Sudan

The central patch of Sudan and Chad’s 869-mile border is a dried river mattress of moist gentle sand and huge puddles of water.

Large boulders and desert hills mark the Chadian aspect of the valley. Under lots of its thorn timber are new Sudanese refugees, fleeing the brutal ongoing violence of their border city.

The crowds sit there and watch.

Just throughout the river is the plush greenery of Darfur’s western borderlands and behind a hill, smoke billows and gunfire echo out.

I ask a crowd of largely teenage women standing and staring in that path what the sound is.

“These are the rifles that have been hitting us. Our family are trapped in there and have been shot,” says 16-year-old Yasmin.

Their city Masterai is without doubt one of the largest border settlements within the area. Many of them are farmers who’ve now been compelled to cede their land to tribal Arab militias. In 2003, many in Darfur known as them the janjaweed – devils on horseback – and in 2023, they merely name them “the Arabs”.

While many wait on the banks for his or her family members to emerge, others have moved deeper into Chad.

Maryam Adam is standing beneath a tree together with her family members and neighbours after we meet her. She fled together with her pregnant daughter and a number of the kids in her household.

“My sister’s son has been killed and we had to leave him there. He’s 11 years old,” says Maryam.

Her sister is lacking.

Chad closed its border with Sudan within the early days of the struggle in Khartoum. As the military wage a brutal battle with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, the Arab clan militias they had been born out of in Darfur have been emboldened of their violence.

“When the war started Chad made the decision to secure the entire border but there are still pathways for civilians to make it through,” says Ali Mohamed, Chad’s chief regional officer stationed in Adre.

In Adre’s Central Hospital, Medicines Sans Frontier (MSF) have arrange three tents to deal with wounded civilians.

The newest victims of the Mastarei assault are in them, lots of them with gunshot wounds.

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One of them is three-year-old Bilal Yacuub who was hit by a bullet in his hip. One older sister cries over him and one other, Yasmin, is one stretcher away together with her personal bullet wound. They are with their aunt Haja – their mom continues to be inside.

Not an hour passes earlier than extra wounded civilians arrive within the hospital yard behind land cruisers.

People come from the corners of the hospital to collect round. They peer over docs to test if their family members are being introduced in – reeling from a stark actuality that feels all too acquainted.