In my country, schools have turned into graves

Othman Fadlallah
When war lacks morals, when it becomes a blind war, and its participants have no regard for human life, their thirst for blood blinds them to anything else. You go out to bury one body and return with three corpses and two injured from the neighborhood. Instead of healing the wounds in the heart of a family that couldnt find a cure for their kidney failure patient, and seeing them pass away, they open three graves.

This story is not from my imagination or the product of my thoughts, as war enthusiasts of this game would wish. It is a reality witnessed by the first neighborhood of Umbeda, from which a funeral carriage carrying the body of Naji Ali Bashir emerged, as his soul departed toward the burial grounds of Al-Bakri.

The people of the neighborhood gathered to accompany him to his final resting place, believing that the road was safe after the expulsion of the Janjaweed from the area.

When the carriage reached the area north of the popular market, near the garbage dump, they were showered with bullets from snipers perched on buildings. The driver of the truck and one of his companions died instantly, while two others were severely injured, lying between life and death in Al-Rakha Hospital. The deceased, along with Naji, are:

Ibrahim Mustafa
Al-Khatim Ali Bashir

The mourners returned amidst anger and bewilderment. Because those who sniped at the mourners were affiliated with the Sudanese Armed Forces, burying their dead with deep pain in their souls at the Tawakkol School in the third neighborhood.

In my country, schools have turned into graves, and we ask, is there more to come?

In my country, roads have turned into massacres, and we ask, is there more to come?

What kind of war is this, where there are no roads for civilians to bury their dead? What kind of war is this, where there is no civil defense team to help the afflicted, rescue those buried under rubble, extinguish fires, and aid the hungry?