NEARLY 300 orphans caught in the crossfire in Sudan’s capital have been rescued in a daring and dangerous evacuation by humanitarian workers.
The evacuations were carried out following the deaths of 67 children at the Mygoma orphanage in Khartoum.
They died of starvation, dehydration and infections as fighting prevented staff from reaching the orphanage.
Khartoum has been hit by daily air strikes and heavy clashes between rival forces since 15 April.
The orphanage is in an area that has been at the heart of the fighting between the military and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
In a risky operation, 297 children – about 200 of them below the age of two years – were taken by road to the relative safety of Wad Madani, in the south of Sudan.
Another 95 children, both from the Mygoma orphanage and other smaller facilities across the capital, were evacuated over the weekend by a group of local activists.
The state-run Mygoma orphanage was home to about 400 children when the war broke out in April.
It became too dangerous for many doctors and carers to reach the orphanage to look after the children.
Power and water cuts made the sweltering temperatures, reaching as high as 43C, unbearable.
Children, especially the youngest ones, started dying.
“We are losing them so fast. In recent days, we lost three children,” Sudanese activist Sadeia al-Rasheed Ali Hamid told me earlier this week.
The UN children’s agency, Unicef, said that 67 orphans had died at Mygoma since 15 April.
Local activists and international aid organisations were trying to get the children out of the warzone, but it was not easy.
Ceasefire talks in the Saudi city of Jeddah had collapsed and full-scale fighting had resumed.
Poor communication along the chain of command of the warring sides meant that securing safe access to the orphanage, and out of Khartoum, was difficult.
Transporting hundreds of children and babies was a huge logistical challenge.
But Sadeia tells me there was no alternative.
With a handful of local activists, she organised a private evacuation for the older children aged between four and 15 years.
“We extracted them from certain death to a fate that I hope is better,” says Heba Abdullah, a carer from the orphanage who travelled with them.
This first convoy of minibuses set off during the fighting, passing several checkpoints.
On the front of the first minibus, a bedsheet was placed, with a message to the militias written on it: there are children on board.
The group was welcomed in a school in the town of al-Hasaheisa, south of Khartoum.
Aid worker with baby