In a small house in Omdurman, Hassan Saber Jumaa, a senior administrator at the Zamzam displacement camp in Sudan, sat on a simple wooden chair. He scrolled through his phone, looking for any photograph he might have of Zamzam, which is near el-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, and once sheltered hundreds of thousands. Jumaa explained that his old phone was looted during last year’s attack by Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces on the camp.
Pointing to the bare walls around him, Jumaa said that all he has left are his memories of the camp, and the people who once called it home. Zamzam, established in 2004, was home to generations of people displaced by western Sudan’s Darfur war, which began in 2003 and continued for nearly two decades. Alongside Abu Shouk camp and al-Salam camp, Zamzam formed part of one of Darfur’s largest concentrations of displaced people.
Jumaa recalled a bustling community, with its market open every day, and children walking to school. Zamzam continued as a refuge for civilians until Sudan’s current war, which began in 2023. The RSF, fighting the Sudanese Armed Forces and its allies, captured the camp in April 2025, after months of attacks.
Famine had been confirmed in the camp in August 2024. Mukhtar Musa, a survivor of the assault, watched the community he knew descend into starvation and violence. He said restrictions on the movement of goods had exhausted food supplies, leaving some residents with little choice but to eat animal feed and peanut shells.
Umm Kulthum Ali Saleh described the months before the final attack as the hardest of her life. The RSF siege on Zamzam stopped goods from entering. She searched for food every morning, and recalled seeing women cooking grass and mixing mud with flour to bake bread.
Saleh believes the blockade was not merely a military measure, but a deliberate way to weaken the camp’s residents in advance of the final offensive, and Zamzam’s fall. On April 11, the RSF launched a three-day assault using cars, camels, and horses, burning straw homes and health facilities. A United Nations Human Rights Office report documented at least 1,013 civilians killed, including 319 who were summarily executed in homes, markets, schools, clinics, and mosques.
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