By Sheila Ponnie
Members of the Sudanese community living in Portland, Maine are still coming to terms with the shocking death of family members in the latest intercommunal conflict, where 45 people were killed.
The attacks took place in the rebel-held region of Sudan’s Kordofan state, south-southwest of the capital, Khartoum. Those who spoke to Amjambo Africa cited the historical land dispute as the source of the latest conflict.
Homes were torched and scores of children, including a 16-year-old-girl, were rapedHundreds of survivors fled to the mountains. They are yet to be accounted for.
Meirgani Alaari, a Sudanese American community leader and event director based in Portland, said he lost his 42-year-old brother in Kudi in the Nuba Mountains. “It was a random shooting. They burned many houses,” Alaari told Amjambo Africa. Another local who spoke to Amjambo Africa from Juba said the attackers “raped young children and burned the elderly persons” in their houses. “Three elderly grandparents were killed. One had a sick wife in the compound. They could not escape as people were running, so they got burnt inside their houses,” he said.
The Nuba Mountains are home to the indigenous Nuba people, over 50 ethnic groups who share a precolonial history of marginalization and conflict within Sudan. Communities in the Nuba Mountains have witnessed systemic isolation by successive Arab-led Khartoum regimes, leading to brutal counterinsurgency campaigns against minority Black Christians.
The marginalization dates back to the British colonial era. Tension deepened in the buildup to South Sudan’s liberation struggle, in which most leaders and locals from the Nuba Mountains supported southern calls for secession.
Though the rebels remain in North Sudan, the region continued with the rebellion against Khartoum, which has always been targeted for mechanized agriculture due to its fertile land.
“They are creating these ethnic divisions so they can pretty much take over that area for agriculture,” a local from Kudi village in the Nuba Mountains, who escaped the conflict to neighbouring South Sudan in 2025, told Amjambo Africa in Juba.
Forces allied with a local militia operating in the area carried out three deadly attacks in May, killing 45 people, including Alaari’s younger brother and a cousin.
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“I am afraid, if this continues, we will see another genocide in Sudan. I hope the international community finds ways to intervene before it is too late,” said Alaari.
Locals described the attacks at Debi, Koudi, and Kauda as “massacre and genocide.”
“Some people were shot; others were burnt in their houses. Those who survived ran to the mountains,” said another source who asked that we hide his identity for fear of reprisal.
In 2011, the Sudanese government blocked humanitarian access to the Nuba Mountains, leaving over 100,000 people vulnerable to starvation. Since then, international organizations operating in Sudan have been reluctant to intervene due to diplomatic sensitivities.
Sudan People’s Liberation Movement–North and Rapid Support Forces joined in 2025 to push for the formation of a republic, “New Sudan.” The deal has since collapsed, with the two sides turning against each other. As a result, supporters of either side have also turned against each other, a conflict which has since taken a tribal turn even as they collectively fight the Khartoum regime.
Conflict broke out in Sudan on April 15 when the paramilitary wing of Rapid Support Forces waged war against Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF). The three-year-old conflict has reportedly killed more than 50,000 people, according to the United Nations.
Following the death of his brother, Alaari, who has five children of his own, said he will have to step in and take care of the children who were in his brother’s care..
“He had five children of his own and adopted three orphans. I don’t know how life will be but I’ll have to support them,” Alaari said before breaking down during the interview. His brother was also caring for their aging mother. One of the children Alaari’s brother adopted lost his parents in the ongoing conflict.
Sudan is currently experiencing the largest humanitarian crisis in the world in terms of the number of people who need assistance, according to the International Rescue Committee (IRC).
Three years into the conflict, the IRC said, the war has displaced approximately 14 million people, leaving two-thirds of the population (33.7 million people) in need of humanitarian support.
“We came with these children up in the mountains to hide,” says one woman captured on a video shared with Amjambo Africa. In the video, up to ten children, some with no clothes, are seen. Due to decades of marginalization, the Nuba Mountains still lack basic services like internet, electricity grids, and mobile phone signals.
The ongoing aid blockade now exposes more than 17,000 people in Kauda alone to risk of starvation. Alaari said more deaths could be experienced in the coming days if humanitarian assistance fails to reach the survivors. “Right now, what they are worried about is food. They need food,” Alaari said in a trembling voice before breaking down for the second time, his voice full of pain.
Though he has lived in the United States for over 40 years, Alaari knows exactly what it feels like to go to bed on an empty stomach. His journey to America began in 1985 when he dropped out of a boarding school in Kauda due to severe starvation. He would later head to Khartoum, where he took up manual jobs to survive. “Due to massive starvation (in Sudan) during that time — I was in a boarding school — and there was no food. I had to go to Khartoum while the situation was assessed in regards to food.”
Alaari arrived in America in 1986 and stayed for 17 years before finally returning to Sudan in 2023. That was the second and last time he saw his late brother, whom he left when he was just six months old.
“It’s frustrating. It’s like running into a wall that is so high. You keep climbing but you come back down,” Alaari said. “Right now, as we speak, what I really wish is someone to deliver food to these people. I don’t care about anything else right now…without food, these people are going to die.
It is not just my brother alone and his kids. It’s about the whole village that has been pushed to the mountains. They have so many ways to die. Before, it was the guns. Right now, it is hunger. They are in the mountains; they are going to freeze to death or die of hunger because they have no food. Without food in your stomach, it’s pretty much a done deal. Those children will be the ones to go (die) fast, and then the old people.”
Alaari is now calling on the international community to compel Khartoum to open humanitarian routes to allow aid to those in serious need. “The problem is that it is the government doing that to their own people. It’s unfortunate,” he said.
Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in the early June 2026 print edition of Amjambo Africa.
