The ordeal of those besieged on Tuti Island

At the confluence of the White Nile and the Blue Nile, Tuti Island was a quiet little paradise in the heart of a bustling megalopolis. In the heart of Khartoum, residents came to walk through this green wasteland of just 8 square kilometers that has the shape of a crescent moon surrounded by water. On the railing of the only bridge that connects Tuti with the mainland, young couples discreetly held hands, immortalized under the setting sun by amateur photographers.

Surrounded by fields of beans, arugula and vegetables, the island was known as the garden of the capital of Sudan. When the sun was too strong, the farmers slept peacefully in the shade of the palm trees. When it ebbed, fishermen cast their nets along its muddy banks. On its eastern side, the immense beach of fine sand deposited by the river was the meeting place for families who came to have lunch there, sitting with their feet in the water in multicolored plastic chairs. The gurgling of water pipes and the regular sound of motor pumps that watered crops were the metronomes of a peaceful life.

Then the war broke out. Since April 15, 2023, caught in fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) led by General Abdel Fattah Abdelrahman Al-Bourhane, with whom the world obtained authorization to go to the country, and the Rapid Support Forces (FSR), a militia led by General Mohammed Hamdan Daglo, known under the pseudonym “Hemetti”, nicknamed “the Hyacinth of the Nile” has become a place of rural agony. For eighteen months, the inhabitants of the island suffered the occupation of the paramilitaries, who increased the abuses in this enclave converted into an open-air prison.

The 30,000 inhabitants fled

In October, after the regular army counteroffensive in the center of Khartoum, Tuti was completely emptied. In a few weeks, the more than 30,000 inhabitants of the island, hostages of the war, fled. Except for about fifty, some shepherds and a handful of elderly people, not a soul is left alive.

In Omdurman, on the west bank of the Nile, more than 400 Tuti survivors found refuge at the Al-Manial boarding school, crammed into dormitories that housed female students at a university before the war. Suitcases full of clothes are piled up in the patio. In the brick building, men are installed on the ground floor, older women on the first floor, children and their mothers on the top floor. They all sleep in junk bunk beds.

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