It took the 16-year-old three days to travel just a handful of miles to get to hospital, and he may have died if the bullet had not made a clean entry and exit out of his body.
Moving around the streets of the Sudanese capital has become a life-threatening endeavour. Khartoum descended into an intense city-wide firefight this week, which has also engulfed much of its twin city across the Nile, Omdurman.
The teenager, a high school student, was hit while on his way to dawn prayers at the mosque in Omdurman. On Tuesday, he lay in a hospital bed, visibly in pain and accompanied by his uncle, Hamid Adam.
“We are lucky that the bullet that hit him went out from the other side of his abdomen,” said Adam.
There was heavy fighting around the el-Halfayia bridge, which connects the two cities, he added. “You can’t imagine the smell of the dead people on the streets. Nobody can recover them.”
His nephew had been waiting for doctors to decide when to take him into the operating theatre. “He might still have shrapnel inside his body,” his uncle said.
For the fourth day, residents of Khartoum and Omdurman have listened in fear to heavy gunfire and explosions, with military jets roaring overhead, as a power struggle plays out between the army and the paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
Both have announced that they will uphold a 24-hour ceasefire at the request of US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, but the cities have already suffered badly. A number of hospitals are closed after being hit by shells.
Still operational, the Omdurman teaching hospital has received about 300 wounded civilians and soldiers, mostly from Omdurman and north Khartoum, but fewer cases from Khartoum, where the fighting is centred.
Some of the wounded are fighters. Many of them did not go to the hospital immediately, but went home first to change their uniforms so that they could not be identified as combatants.
One soldier, aged 23, has been in a critical situation after being shot in his chest and leg, and lay alone in a hospital bed. “My family is too far from here and they don’t know about my situation. I was taken to a different hospital, but that was closed down … but today they got me here.”
Khalid el-Sir, the medical manager at the hospital, said medics lack oxygen and supplies because they used to receive them on a daily basis from downtown Khartoum. Now, the bridges are closed and nothing can get across. “It has become impossible to get anything,” he said, as the sound of gunfire and shells rang out outside. “The situation here is devastating now. Since Saturday, we have received more than 300 cases of wounded civilians and soldiers. Thirty died of their wounds. Some of the wounds were in the chest and some of them were in their heads. Among them are small children and women.”
El-Sir is worried that his depleted staff will not be able to continue doing their jobs “We lack staff. The ones we have here have been exhausted – they have been working for four days and many of them haven’t seen their families and children since before the start of the war. At some point they will stop working unless things change.”
Ibrahim Abbas, a civilian, was shot in his backside and had lost a lot of blood. “I was on my motorbike in Khartoum North and I saw the RSF shot me. I don’t know if it was accidentally or if they meant to shoot.”
So dangerous is it to walk around that there are reports of uncovered bodies across the city. Political activist Khalid al-Tageea, who was shot and killed at Khartoum University’s schools of arts, was buried inside the university where he graduated after his family could not reach him.
A few people remain on the streets of Omdurman, several carrying luggage and desperate to flee the city. In the safest parts of Omdurman, which are the working-class neighbourhoods, children were seen carrying freshly made biscuits on their heads on big plates to be cooked at nearby public bakeries, in preparation for the Eid festival next week.
Others on the streets are intelligence forces in plainclothes with concealed guns.
Siddig Salih, a 50-year-old resident of Omdurman, went out in search for medicine for his diabetic mother. All the pharmacies are closed in Omdurman, but he was told that one might still be open near the national TV and radio buildings, the scene of heavy fighting. He said he kept praying on his way to that pharmacy. “I am going there because my mother is critically ill. Why are these generals doing this to us?”
