Thousands of Sudanese fleeing fighting with no travel documents trapped on the border with Egypt

Thousands of Sudanese fleeing fighting with no travel documents trapped on the border with Egypt

ASWAN, Egypt: When fighting in Sudan erupted in mid-April, Abdel-Rahman Sayyed and his family tried to hold out hiding in their home in the capital, Khartoum, as the sounds of explosions, gunfights and the roar of warplanes echoed across the city of 6 million people.

They lived right by one of the fiercest front lines, near the military’s headquarters in central Khartoum, where the army and a rival paramilitary, the Rapid Support Forces, battled for control. Three days into the conflict, a shell hit their two-story home, reducing much of it to rubble.

Luckily, Sayyed, his wife and three children survived, and they immediately fled the war-torn city. The problem was their passports were buried under the wreckage of their home.

Now they are among tens of thousands of people without travel documents trapped at the border with Egypt, unable to cross into Sudan’s northern neighbor.

“We narrowly escaped with our lives,” the 38-year-old Sayyed said in a recent phone interview from Wadi Halfa, the closest Sudanese city to the border. He said he was stunned that Egyptian authorities wouldn’t let his family in. “I thought we would be allowed in as refugees,” he said.

Two months in, clashes continue