One dawn in mid-April, the very air in Zamzam Camp seemed to shatter.
The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) stormed the displacement camp in North Darfur, launching a brutal three-day assault that killed hundreds of people and left countless others scattered, injured or missing.
Gunfire echoed through makeshift shelters. Families ran in every direction. Many never made it out.
On April 13, the RSF claimed to have captured what it called the “Zamzam military base”. But those living there said no such thing existed, that Zamzam was simply where displaced families clung to life.
The takeover followed five months of suffocating siege. Roads and aid were blocked, and survival left to chance.
A shelter turned into a battlefield
Zamzam, 15km (9.3 miles) south of el-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state, has been a refuge for civilians displaced by the Darfur conflict since the 2000s.
At the time, rights groups said the violence was ethnic cleansing and possibly genocide by state-backed “Arab” nomadic militias against mainly “non-Arab” sedentary communities.
About 300,000 people have ended up in Zamzam since 2003. The number swelled to well above 500,000 due to violence that has spread across the western region of Darfur since Sudan’s civil war erupted between the RSF and Sudanese military in April 2023.
In the past year, Zamzam has transformed from a place of refuge into a killing field.
Aid blockades, repeated RSF attacks and famine have stripped the camp of food, medicine and basic security.
The military and its allied forces managed to repel dozens of RSF assaults, but the troops soon returned to el-Fasher, their last stronghold, leaving the camp exposed once again.
Dr Ibrahim Abdallah, director general of health in North Darfur, told Al Jazeera over the phone that the death toll likely exceeds 500.
“Due to the Sudanese tradition of burying the dead immediately to honour them, it’s hard to keep track,” he said. “And with Zamzam located many kilometres from el-Fasher, transporting the bodies for documentation is nearly impossible.”
Fleeing one nightmare, only to find another
A young woman, who asked to remain anonymous for her safety, spoke to Al Jazeera from el-Fasher, to which she, her husband and her two younger brothers fled.
She says fear has followed them and told Al Jazeera part of the story of how she came to flee Zamzam.
In January 2024, she had been living with her husband in Wadi Shadra in North Darfur with her 15-year-old and 9-year-old brothers, who moved in with them after her parents died.
The RSF attacked Wadi Shadra, and the blended family fled to Zamzam, where they thought they had escaped the worst.
But then, just over a year later, another attack.
“It started at dawn on Friday [April 11],” she said. “A large force stormed the camp from the south, towards one of the markets. Fire broke out in every direction as gunfire rang out.”
They hid in trenches for a full day without food or water as a shell shattered their home and another struck a neighbour’s, killing three children.
Then they ran, fleeing to the nearby village of Saluma.
“But the RSF followed us there too. They torched the houses and shouted that we must go to Tawila immediately,” she said.
Their donkey had been killed and their cart destroyed, so they had no other option than to walk for hours to el-Fasher under a blazing sun.
“I lost my aunt and two of her children that day. We still don’t know what happened to her other three children.”
Trapped away from his family: Nasr’s story
Nasr, who asked to be identified by just one name, fled Zalingei, the capital of Central Darfur, with his family in October 2023 after RSF fighters took the city. His father, a community leader, had twice been threatened by the late RSF commander Ali Yakoub.
The family passed through Sarf Omra, in Kabkabiya, North Darfur, before arriving in Zamzam on November 22, 2023.
He arrived with his wife, two children – a spirited three-year-old daughter and a toddler son just over one and a half years old – as well as his parents and several siblings.
Together, they built a fragile shelter and tried to start over. Each morning, Nasr made the 30km (18.6-mile) round trip to el-Fasher to work in the livestock market and bring home food.
Then, in February, RSF fighters stormed the camp. Roads were closed. The siege tightened.
Nasr never made it back to his family.
His wife, children, elderly parents and younger siblings remained behind, caught in the chaos.
“A tree is more valuable in this world than we are. We lost all our human value in this world,” Nasr said.
He rejected the RSF’s claim of a “military base” in Zamzam as a cruel distortion. He recalled how people dug trenches to shield themselves from relentless bombardment.
He later saw a video of detained men, among them his uncle. One of the RSF leaders delivered a clear message to them: “Join the RSF or suffer.”
Nasr has spent agonising days in el-Fasher, waiting by roadsides, clinging to hope that someone from Zamzam might bring word of his family.
He asks about them in whispers, his voice heavy with fear.
At last, he heard they had fled towards Tawila, but he adds: “Until now, I don’t know if they reached Tawila or not.”
‘More than 28 attacks in five months’
Mohamed Khamis, spokesperson for the displaced in Zamzam, is now a patient in a hospital in el-Fasher.
He was shot in the thigh during the RSF’s assault.
The camp had endured more than 28 attacks in five months, he told Al Jazeera, but none matched the scale and violence of the latest.
“They stormed in at dawn with heavy weaponry,” he said.
In the early moments of the attack, they reportedly targeted a Relief International Clinic, and Khamis rushed to check on friends, but he never made it.
“I was intercepted by an armoured RSF vehicle,” he said.
The RSF fighters shot him and left him on the ground to bleed out, but he was rescued by residents and smuggled to safety.
“Many young men were executed during the rampage,” he said.
He continued, trying to describe what happened.
More than 12 women and girls were confirmed to have been abducted by RSF fighters while fleeing. Their whereabouts remain unknown, as well as what they may be suffering.
There are reports of women and girls being raped, “no fewer than 200 cases” according to Khamis, although he is certain many more have gone unreported.
No safe haven left
In the minds of those displaced for the second or third time, the idea of safety is gone.
The RSF narrative is that it is fighting “military elements” in Zamzam, but testimonies like Nasr’s and Khamis’s refute that.
“There was nothing there but people trying to survive,” Nasr said again, as if repetition might finally end the world’s indifference.
But the silence remains.
Survivors are left with ashes, unanswered questions and a single haunting truth: “We lost our human value in this world.”
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