For people previously targeted by the RSF, it is hard to square the brutal past with the current reality which came only shortly after the RSF carried out a campaign of indiscriminate killing in the Nuba Mountains.Many witnesses or victims of those massacres live in displacement camps across the Nuba.
Huda Hamid Ahmad, a 31-year-old mother of seven, arrived at al-Hilu camp in September 2024, months after fleeing a brutal attack by RSF forces on her hometown of Habila that January.
“They came to the homes, torturing, looting, and threatening to kill your children,” Huda said, recalling the January assault.
Accessible only by rough mountain roads, Habila is about 70km (40 miles) from al-Hilu and has been a main site of intense fighting and ethnic targeting in South Kordofan since the 2023 war started.
Huda’s journey was far from direct. After escaping Habila, she briefly resettled in Kortala, but was forced to flee again when the RSF launched another offensive in September and food supplies ran out.
Her husband had made his way to al-Hilu earlier in the year, shortly after the initial attack, hoping to farm and send food back to the family after their land in Habila was looted and made unsafe.
Fatima Ibrahim, 52, stands by her thatched hut in al-Hilu camp on April 23, 2025 …
