the ordeal of the besieged of 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 noisy megalopolis. In the very center of Khartoum, residents came to walk on this green moor of barely 8 square kilometers which takes the shape of a crescent moon surrounded by water. On the railing of the only bridge that connects Tuti to the mainland, young couples discreetly held hands, immortalized in the setting sun by amateur photographers.

Bordered by fields of beans, arugula and vegetables, the island was known as the garden of Sudan's capital. When the sun was too strong, the farmers slept nonchalantly 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 on multi-colored plastic chairs. The gurgling of hookahs and the regular sound of motor pumps irrigating the crops were the metronomes of a peaceful life.

Then the war broke out. Since April 15, 2023, stuck in the fighting between the armed forces of Sudan (FAS) 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 headed by General Mohammed Hamdan Daglo, known under the pseudonym “Hemetti”, the one nicknamed ” the Nile hyacinth” has become a rural dying place. For eighteen months, the inhabitants of the island suffered the occupation of paramilitaries, who increased the abuses in this enclave converted into an open-air prison.

The 30,000 inhabitants fled

In October, following the regular army's counter-offensive in downtown Khartoum, Tuti was completely emptied. In a few weeks, the more than 30,000 inhabitants of the island, hostages of the war, fled. With the exception of around fifty of them, a few shepherds and a handful of old men, there is not a soul left alive.

In Omdurman, on the west bank of the Nile, more than 400 Tuti survivors found refuge in the Al-Manial boarding school, crammed into dormitories which accommodated female students from a university before the war. In the courtyard, suitcases filled with clothes pile up. In the brick building, the men are installed on the ground floor, the elderly women on the first floor, the children and their mothers on the top floor. They all sleep on scrap metal bunk beds.

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