In better times, the Lisamin Safari Hotel in Khartoum was home to tourists exploring Sudan’s little-known ancient pyramids and coral reefs. For AP reporter jackjeffery50 and a dozen others, it recently became a place of refuge from ferocious fighting.
FILE - Smoke rises in Khartoum, Sudan, on April 22, 2023. In the country's capital, Sudan's army and the paramilitary group known as the Rapid Support Forces have battled in the streets with automatic rifles, artillery and airstrikes. An AP journalist, waiting for a chance to leave the country, sheltered with a diverse group of more than a dozen people who hunkered down in a small hotel in central Khartoum. FILE - Smoke rises in Khartoum, Sudan, on April 22, 2023.
KHARTOUM, Sudan — We were a diverse group of more than a dozen people, hunkered down in a small hotel in central Khartoum — a Sudanese family and the Sudanese hotel staff, a few British and French citizens, a Syrian family and a Lebanese man. In better times, the Lisamin Safari Hotel catered to small tour groups that came to see Sudan’s little-known attractions — the ancient pyramids of Merowe and the coral reefs of the Red Sea.Fighting between Sudan’s two most powerful generals had reduced the capital to an urban battlefield. The city had never seen anything like it, as the army and the paramilitary group known as the Rapid Support Forces blasted each other in the streets with automatic rifles, artillery and airstrikes.
Each day, millions of Sudanese caught between them faced terrifying choices of how to survive: Stay hiding at home, where a bullet or a missile could blast through a wall, or make a run for it, risking the mayhem outside. After days trapped in their homes, many chose to flee to the Liasamin Hotel — most of them on foot from the nearby neighborhood known as Khartoum 2, when the destruction became too great. I got to the hotel on the seventh day of the fighting. In this place of temporary safety, we all began to search for a way to escape the city.
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