Sudanese flee across border and back to escape overrun oil town

A displaced Sudanese woman from the Heglig area in western Sudan receives a blanket at the Abu al-Naga displacement Camp in the Gedaref State, some 420km east of the capital Khartoum on December 30, 2025. [AFP]

When paramilitary fighters closed in on the Sudanese border town and oil field of Heglig, paraplegic Dowa Hamed could only cling to her husband's back as they fled, "like a child", she told AFP.

Now the 25-year-old mother of five -- paralysed from the waist down -- lies shell-shocked on a cot in the Abu al-Naga displacement camp, a dusty transit centre just outside the eastern city of Gedaref, nearly 800 kilometres (500 miles) from home.