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A pregnant woman's diary of escape from war zone: 'I prayed the baby wouldn't come'

In the month of May Amira embarked on a perilous journey through one of Sudan's most active war zones.

The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) had just seized the city where she was living - En Nahud in the state of West Kordofan.

The road out was dangerous, but she felt she had no choice. She was seven months pregnant.

"There were no hospitals anymore, no pharmacies," she said, "and I was afraid if I stayed longer, I wouldn't find any vehicles heading out. Travel had become almost non-existent: incredibly difficult and extremely expensive."

The civil war between the Sudanese military and the RSF has brutalised civilians for more than two years. Now, the front line has shifted to the southern region of Kordofan, through which Amira travelled.

The BBC is not using her real name to protect her identity.

As Amira fled, she recorded an audio diary that was made available to the BBC by the global campaigns group Avaaz. We also reached her by telephone in Uganda's capital, Kampala, where she is waiting to deliver her child.

Right from the beginning of the trip there was trouble.

The RSF and its allies controlled all the transport, Amira said.

When she and her husband boarded the truck to take her out of En Nahud, a fight broke out between the young man who had rented the vehicle for his family, and the RSF driver, who was selling more seats to other passengers.

"The driver immediately pulled out his gun and threatened to shoot the young man who had rented the truck. Everyone was pleading with him, including his RSF companion," Amira said.

"The boy's grandmother and mother were crying and holding on to the driver's legs, begging him not to shoot. We passengers were frozen with fear."

For good reason.

"I felt that if he decided to shoot, he would shoot many people, not just one," she told me later. "Because he was drunk and smoking marijuana."

Eventually the driver put his gun away, but the young man stayed behind in En Nahud.

The overloaded truck set out on an uneven road full of potholes and crossed by streams, piled with luggage and 70 or 80 people, mothers clinging on to whatever they could grab hold of with one hand, and trying to keep their children safe with the other.

"I was scared the entire time," Amira said. "I kept praying the baby wouldn't come - just hoping everything would be OK."

Men pushing a vehicle loaded with baggage on its roof along a dirt road in Sudan.

Eventually, the travellers made it to el-Fula, the state capital of West Kordofan. But Amira did not want to stay there any longer than she had to, because the army was closing in.

"I didn't know what would happen if the army reached el-Fula," she recorded in her audio diary, "especially because soldiers have begun targeting people of certain ethnic groups that they thought were linked to the RSF, like the Baggara and the Rizeigat.

"My husband is from one of those groups, even though he has nothing to do with the RSF. He's a public sector worker and studied law - but right now, that doesn't matter. People are being targeted just because of their ethnicity."

The Sudanese armed forces and their allied militias have been accused of going after civilians suspected of collaborating with the RSF in territory they capture, in what the UN has called credible reports of extrajudicial killings.

The military has previously condemned "individual" violations committed by some soldiers when accused of human rights abuses.

The army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan appointed a committee earlier this year to investigate alleged abuses during the military's sweep through central Sudan.

Kordofan, made up of three states, has now become the main battleground. The region is critically important to Sudan's war, as the site of key oil fields, and a strategic centre of major transportation routes.

The involvement of other militias alongside the RSF, especially the powerful SPLM-N, has intensified the violence and amplified a severe humanitarian crisis, making it nearly impossible for aid groups to send in supplies.

After leaving el-Fula, it took Amira three days and several changes of vehicles to get to the border with South Sudan, and safety. There were endless obstacles.

"The RSF drivers were working according to their mood," she said.

"They decided who got to ride, where they sat, and how much they paid. There was no standard pricing - you had to endure it. These men were armed, and violence came easily to them."

Every 20 minutes or so the travellers were stopped at RSF checkpoints and forced to pay those stationed there, she said.

This despite the fact that they were accompanied by RSF-affiliated escorts, who they were also paying.

Food was very expensive, water was scarce.

A rough bed made of string and tree branches seen on a muddy road in el-Hujairat

In one village, el-Hujairta, the travellers managed to connect to the internet, on an RSF Starlink device. But even that had its dangers.

"Once you're back online you have to be careful," Amira said. "If the RSF men hear you - like if you watch an army video, or play an army ringtone or song, or even just mention the Rapid Support Forces casually in a conversation - they'll arrest you."

Road conditions were terrible, and the vehicles kept breaking down - three times during the course of the journey.

Amira's lowest moment came when a tyre burst as she was travelling through an acacia forest, leaving passengers stranded without any water. People driving by said they had no extra space.

"I swear to God, I felt that I might never reach another place again, that I would die right there," she told me.

"I gave up. I only had a blanket, so I took it, lay down and slept on the ground.

"That day, I truly felt that this would be my end right there."

But it was not the end.

Amira and her husband finally managed to hitch a ride on a pick-up truck carrying a cargo of vegetables.

The next day they made it to Abyei, on the border, but travel there was slowed down by rain and flooding.

At this point they were in a vehicle loaded with fuel barrels, which kept getting stuck.

"The car would sink into the mud again and again," says Amira.

"Our clothes were soaked. Our bags, already ruined by dust and heat, were now drenched.

"We were freezing and just praying to reach safety."

Eventually the couple made it to South Sudan's capital, Juba - around 1,300km (810 miles) south of En Nahud - from where they took a bus to Uganda's capital.

Now that she has reached safety, the relief is bittersweet.

A blue plastic stool on which a glass of milk, a glass of tea and a packet of biscuits can be seen.

Amira is desperately worried about family members who have stayed behind, and sad and anxious as she prepares to give birth.

"I'm very afraid of the feeling of giving birth, because this is my first time, my first baby and I won't have my mother with me," she says.

"It will just be my friend and my husband. I don't know… it's so many things, so unorganised, it's so overwhelming."

Amira is a women's rights and pro-democracy activist who took up relief work during the war, through what are known as Emergency Response Rooms.

Her group was viewed with suspicion by the military, she said. Some members were arrested.

"I was afraid of the army and military intelligence," she told me. "They would arrest young men and keep them detained.

"But when the Rapid Support Forces came, they were not any better. They loot, they rape. They do no less than what the army does. They are all the same."

Despite widespread evidence of looting and allegations of rape, the RSF also says it does not target civilians. It has dismissed charges of ethnic cleansing, describing the violence as tribal conflicts.

Both sides have denied allegations of war crimes.

The challenge for Amira right now - and the joy - is becoming a mother.

But always there is the question of whether she will be able to return to Sudan with her child.

"I hope that Sudan's situation will improve," she says. "It won't be the same safety as before, and it won't be the same people, not the same places - everything will change.

"But if the war stops, there will at least be some kind of security. People won't just die randomly, like they are now."