In December, in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum, I met families who had fled the war with their children still beside them. Alive. Fed. Loved. Safe.

Six months later, the front lines have moved, and the question is whether children like those will survive what is bearing down on them now.

You can watch my full conversation with UNICEF's Sheldon Yett in the video player above.

The new flashpoint is El Obeid, the capital of North Kordofan and a strategic supply hub for the Sudanese army. The Rapid Support Forces, the paramilitary group the United States has accused of genocide, have encircled the city. The United Nations now warns that roughly 500,000 civilians inside El Obeid and the area around it face an immediate risk of large-scale violence.

Yett, UNICEF's representative to Sudan, connected with me from Khartoum. When I asked whether the label we had used in December, the world's worst humanitarian crisis, still applied, he did not hesitate.

"That label applies in spades," Yett said. "This conflict has become worse by the day. The front lines continue to move, continue to expand."

That expansion is what alarms the people charged with protecting Sudan's children. United Nations officials have told the Security Council that El Obeid carries the markings of El Fasher, the Darfur city where the RSF carried out a massacre last year. Drone attacks by both sides around El Obeid have climbed sharply. Nearly 80 percent of reported child casualties in the area have been linked to those drones.

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Yett laid out the danger in plain terms.

"We know that the risk of extreme violence is very high," he said. "We know the risk a siege is high. And we know that if this does happen, the loss of life, not just from the kinetic violence, but from the impact of the siege, will be absolutely massive."

Reaching those children has become its own ordeal. Aid convoys carrying food and medicine are stopped at checkpoints for days. Permits pile on permits. Yett described trucks held even after permission had been granted at the highest levels. UNICEF says it is funded at a fraction of what the emergency demands, forcing decisions about which communities it can serve and which it cannot.

"It means that children are going to die who wouldn't ordinarily die," Yett said.

A video posted to Telegram in June 2026 appears to show a Rapid Support Forces commander in Sudan welcoming new recruits, some of whom appear to be children.

The video highlights a grim reality of Sudans civil war, now in its fourth year.

Both sides are recruiting children, posting the evidence themselves, and celebrating it with hashtags.

When Scripps News searched the term Lion Cubs on TikTok, it found accounts some with thousands of followers glorifying underage boys as fighters in a conflict already defined by atrocities.

Scripps News flagged the accounts to TikTok. The company removed them, saying the accounts violated its community standards.

The United Nations recently warned that a city of half a million people, El Obeid, may be next in line for the kind of mass violence that killed more than 6,000 people in three days when the RSF seized El Fasher in 2025. The secretary general's message was direct: we must not allow those horrors to be repeated.

To better understand what children in Sudan are experiencing, Scripps News spoke with Francisco Lanino, Save the Childrens deputy country director.

The conditions producing child soldiers, Lanino said, are the same conditions producing mass starvation. When the conflict began, 90% of Sudan's schools shut down. Half remain closed. Teachers who stayed earn salaries so low that they cannot feed their own families. In some villages, he said, up to 60% of children are suffering from severe malnutrition.

"If you don't have access to a school system in which you will be able to read and write," Lanino said, children become far more susceptible to recruitment. To militarization. The pipeline from empty classroom to armed faction, he suggested, is shorter than the world wants to believe.

Sudan's civil war now in its fourth year began as a power struggle between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. It has evolved into something else. Something more precise, and in its precision, more terrifying.

It has become a drone war.

The United Nations put a figure on it in May. Between January and April of 2026, drone strikes killed at least 880 civilians in Sudan more than 80% of all conflict-related civilian deaths in that period. U.N. Human Rights Chief Volker Trk called armed drones "by far and away the leading cause of civilian deaths" in the conflict.

The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project found that drone-related deaths in 2025 alone marked a 600% increase over the previous year.

Most of the carnage has concentrated in Kordofan and Darfur regions that have already seen the worst of what this war can do. Markets. Hospitals. Aid convoys. Schools. The pattern, human rights groups say, signifies strategy.

To understand how Sudan got here, you have to understand where its paramilitary force came from.

The RSF grew out of the Janjaweed militias the horseback raiders accused of mass slaughter in Darfur two decades ago. In those days, the violence was intimate. Up close. Men with rusty AK-47s.

Now there are drones.

Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of the Humanitarian Research Lab at Yale's School of Public Health, has spent years building forensic evidence of what's happening in Sudan from satellite imagery and open-source intelligence. What his lab found in El Fasher the last major city in Darfur still contested before the RSF's final assault reveals a level of operational sophistication that rewrites what we thought we knew about this conflict.

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The RSF, Raymond says, used Chinese-made fixed-wing drones CH-95 or FH-95 models launched from Nyala Airport in South Darfur, roughly 150 miles to the south. Those drones flew north to El Fasher and loitered. They didn't strike immediately. They gathered. Sucking up communications data to locate where people were hiding. Blocking residents from calling for help. Preventing videos from getting out of the city.

Then came the quadcopters small, camera-equipped, packed with explosives deployed from along the berm the RSF had built to prevent escape. Targeting people in bomb shelters, mosques, community kitchens, and schools.

"They were hunters," Raymond told me.

In October, they hunted at the Al-Safiya Mosque in El Fasher's Al-Daraja Awla neighborhood. Raymond described the strike with the grim precision of a forensic investigator: the drone came in at an angle, hit the corrugated metal roof, shrapnelized it, and funneled the fragments down into the body of the building. Seventy-eight people were killed.

"The arc was so precisely planned," Raymond told me, "that if it wasn't horrific, it would be elegant in terms of the thought that went into how the drone hit."

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The RSF is not the only party raining death from above.

Both sides, human rights groups say, are acquiring increasingly sophisticated drone technology through their respective foreign backers. The RSF is supplied primarily through the UAE. The Sudanese Armed Forces have drawn on Turkey, Iran, and Egypt.

On March 20th the first day of Eid al-Fitr a drone struck the El Daein Teaching Hospital in East Darfur. Twice. The WHO confirmed 70 people killed, including 13 children, seven women, and three medical staff. One hundred forty-six wounded. The hospital the primary referral facility for the entire East Darfur state was rendered completely non-functional.

Sudanese rights group Emergency Lawyers reported the strike was carried out by a Sudanese Armed Forces drone. The army denied targeting the hospital. Two military officials, speaking anonymously, told the Associated Press the intended target was a police station nearby.

Yale's researchers looked at the police station. It was untouched.

"By being able to watch the presence of the weapons on the ground before they're launched," Raymond explained, "we can really get crime scene level data like we're dealing with a handgun in a homicide."

In older wars, culpability could be argued. A mortar goes astray. A missile hits a building in error. Accidents, in the fog of war, are at least plausible.

Drones are different. A drone is piloted. It goes where someone directs it. It strikes what someone chooses.

"When we're talking about drones," Scripps News Senior International Correspondent Jason Bellini told Raymond, "there's no deniability there."

"This is so crucial," he replied. "Attribution falling away as you start to use drones that is the critical point."

Inside a hospital in Khartoum, Sudan, doctors quietly refer to one space as the Yellow Floor Room a place reserved for survivors of sexual violence.

Scripps News, the first American media organization allowed into the country since the massacre in Darfur, witnessed the conditions inside firsthand.

Now, as Sudan enters its fourth year of war, those rooms are rarely empty.

A United Nations report released this week shows 12.7 million women and girls in Sudan will need support related to sexual and gender-based violence this year four times higher than before the conflict began.

The U.N. cites overwhelming evidence that sexual violence is being systematically used as a tactic of war, including along escape routes from Kordofan and Darfur.

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Doctors Without Borders, also known as MSF, says the recent fall of Al-Fasher has triggered a surge in attacks. In North Darfur, 95% of survivors treated by MSF identified their attackers as armed men.

Hundreds of miles from the front lines in South Darfur, nearly two-thirds of reported assaults involved multiple attackers. Many occurred while women were carrying out daily tasks such as collecting water or tending fields.

MSFs report marking the third anniversary of the war is titled Theres Something I Want to Tell You, a phrase doctors say they often hear from survivors when they finally seek care in Sudans collapsing health system. Many women delay seeking help until they learn they are pregnant.

They think about, How can I deliver this baby? And how can I face the community with this baby? Dr. Inas Mohammed Ibrahim told Scripps News.

For others, there is no community left only survival. More than 4 million women and girls are internally displaced across Sudan.

The United Nations is seeking $2.5 billion in aid to address the crisis this year. So far, only a fraction of that has been funded.

Sudan is now the world's worst humanitarian crisis, according to a new report from the International Rescue Committee, as war, starvation and mass displacement continue to devastate the country and cut off large parts of Darfur from outside scrutiny.

The IRC's latest Emergency Watchlist ranks Sudan at the top of its global list, citing what aid groups describe as the largest displacement and hunger emergency in the world. More than 14 million people have been forced from their homes, about half of them children, according to United Nations agencies and humanitarian organizations.

The report comes amid mounting allegations of atrocities committed by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in the Darfur city of El Fasher, which fell after a prolonged siege that blocked food, medicine and humanitarian access. No independent journalists have been allowed into the city, leaving much of what happened there difficult to verify.

Aid groups say El Fasher endured an 18-month siege that lasted roughly 500 days before the RSF overran the city on October 26. Hundreds of thousands of civilians were trapped inside. Human rights organizations and UN officials have reported killings, abductions and systematic violence against non-Arab ethnic and tribal communities in Darfur.

The Rapid Support Forces are descendants of the Janjaweed militias blamed for genocide in Darfur two decades ago. International observers warn the current campaign shows disturbing similarities to that earlier violence.

Against that backdrop, Scripps News became the first American news network to reach a remote displacement camp in the Sudanese desert and speak directly with survivors who escaped El Fasher. Their accounts offer rare eyewitness testimony from a city that has been largely sealed off from the outside world.

In the camp, survivors described months of starvation, fear and uncertainty, along with confusion over how many people survived the fall of El Fasher.

Ahmed Al-Zayn, a mother of six, told Scripps News that during the siege, it became too dangerous to leave her home to look for food.

"The deaths became many," she said. "We became hungry. We were shaking from hunger, so we left."

Before fleeing, Al-Zayn said she found two orphaned children in the market after discovering their parents' bodies. Omran, 5, and Munzir, 3, became part of her family even though she had no food to give them.

"So we picked them up, carried them, and fled with them," she said.

They escaped El Fasher at night, but safety was still far away. Al-Zayn said many displaced people died on the journey or were captured by the RSF.

"I was very afraid," she said. "The children were weak. Munzir was very sick. I thought they would die."

She said young men faced particular danger.

"I myself have six boys," Al-Zayn said. "I was afraid they would catch them and I would have to pay money to release them."

Her children helped carry the weakest among them across the desert. For days, she said, their only food was gumbas, a type of dried animal feed soaked in water and rationed to one meal a day.

"We spent eight days on the road," she said. "And without any money."

Those without money, she said, are often still trapped inside El Fasher. "The people who don't have money, you still find them there. And the people who have money, their families tell them to leave."

At the camp, Omran and Munzir received treatment for severe malnutrition. Al-Zayn said Omran weighed just 4 kilograms, about 9 pounds, when they fled El Fasher. Weeks later, she said, he had gained 15 kilograms, or 33 pounds, and had fully recovered.

"So praise be to God, we arrived here," she said. "His health is one hundred percent."

The camp, located near Al-Dabba, was built and funded by a Sudanese businessman. It is hot, dusty and overcrowded, but families there have access to food, medical care and relative safety. Children play again.

From the moment the boys came to her, Al-Zayn said she became their parent. If relatives are found, she will hand the children over. If not, she will continue to care for them.

"God enabled me to take responsibility," she said.

Asked what future she hopes for them, her answer was simple. "May God raise them and let them grow up," she said. "That they learn and keep learning. That they become doctors or something great."

Aid groups warn that without immediate international attention and humanitarian access, more cities in Darfur risk the same fate as El Fasher. For now, much of what happened there remains unseen. What is clear from survivor testimony, they say, is that many never made it out.

A brutal massacre in western Sudan has left hundreds dead and thousands displaced, as advocates warn the world is witnessing yet another act of genocide unfold in real time.

Last week, the Sudanese paramilitary group Rapid Support Forces, also known as RSF, captured the city of El Fasher in the North Darfur State and began a brutal mass killing spree, shedding so much civilian blood that the red stains on the ground can be seen from space in satellite images provided by human rights groups.

Those who escaped the violence have found refuge in the town of Tawila, including more than 700 unaccompanied children.

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I will be unequivocal here: this is an act of genocide, said Shayna Lewis, a Sudan specialist at Avaaz, a nonprofit that raises awareness about global human rights abuses. We have seen the targeting of ethnic groups in El-Fasher, and we also have testimony that the RSF had intended to carry out ethnic based massacres in the city.

Several survivors shared their experiences during a virtual news conference from Sudan hosted by the nonprofit Avaaz. During the hour-long event, survivors recounted harrowing tales of rape, murder, kidnappings, beatings, and other atrocious acts committed by the RSF.

There would be rape, and there would be several violations, said a female survivor. There would be whippings, there would be kickings and anything that you would witness, you just have to stay quiet, and nobody would ask you why you're screaming. Every citizen is just completely afraid.

Survivors also spoke of their tumultuous journey to Tawila, explaining how they faced even more violence along the way. They recounted how the RSF looted all of their belongings, even going as far as to search sensitive areas such as diapers and girls sanitary pads for hidden items. Many said they were forced to make the long trip barefoot, leaving their feet torn up.

We were walking on thorns, and people were thirsty and hungry, walking for hours, said a male survivor. It was quite painful. We didn't give up.

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Once survivors arrived in Tawila, many described feeling a sense of relief. But the horror is still not over.

Adam Rijal, spokesman for the General Coordination for Displaced Persons and Refugees in Darfur, said most people who reached Tawila arrived injured, with gunshot wounds and suffering from severe malnutrition. Several survivors emphasized the need for food, water, blankets, clothing, medical care and other basic necessities, adding that the nongovernmental organizations in the area do not have enough supplies for everyone.

We need access to medication, said a male survivor. There are needs of children, of clothing for children, because now it's winter. And also, basic essentials and food aid. Everything that is present right now would not be sufficient for everyone.

Many also said they still have loved ones in El-Fasher but cannot reach them because of an internet blackout. Those who remain in the city now face extreme hunger. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification the leading international authority on hunger crises has detected a famine in El-Fasher, and several other areas of Sudan are also at risk.

We share this responsibility to not only bear witness, but to take action, because without action, thousands more will die from disease and hunger in Darfur, and many more will die as the Rapid Support Forces and Sudanese Armed Forces continue to fight and attempt to tear Sudan apart, said Lewis. For too long, Sudan has been lamented as the Forgotten War, but it is not forgotten. It is being actively ignored. But we on this call have the power to begin to change things.