Wearing loose clothes with guns in their pockets, a group of seven young men gather every night with a tray of tea on the terrace of one of their houses to guard their east Khartoum neighbourhood.
A breakdown in law and order in the capital amid fighting between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), and an availability of guns in part driven by those that can be taken from the bodies of dead soldiers, has led to an increase in armed robberies. All prisoners in the capital – including convicted murderers – have been released or escaped from prisons and, in the absence of police, groups of civilians banding together to protect themselves.
