Under Threat of Arms.. Plundering Crimes Haunt Residents of Khartoum North

Khartoum – October 15, 2026 – Radio Dabanga. Returning to the city of Bahri, one of the cities of the capital Khartoum, was nothing more than a journey into a disturbing security unknown; after the streets turned into open stages for armed looting gangs wearing military uniforms, following the lifting of the motorcycle ban to expand the scope of their crimes. Amid escalating fears of the collapse of individual security components. Abdel Rahim Ahmed recounts (to Radio Dabanga) that in early October 2026, this nightmare clearly manifested before him in the Abad al-Rahman neighborhood in the northern Khartoum North area; where residents lived through terrifying moments around nine in the evening when a fight broke out in front of the neighborhood mosque. Passersby initially thought it was a passing dispute between young men, only to later realize it was a well-coordinated attack by a criminal cell consisting of three individuals riding a motorcycle. He points out that the gang members distributed themselves with striking professionalism, as one of them stood hidden in the darkness near a wall of a house opposite the mosque, carrying a firearm from which he fired a warning shot to terrorize the residents, while the second took charge of physically engaging with one of the neighborhood residents to try to rob him of his possessions by force, and the third waited on his motorcycle in the middle of the street to secure the escape plan. Thanks to the immediate and courageous rally of the neighborhood residents, Abdel Rahim explains that the perpetrators were forced to flee in less than two minutes without being able to achieve their criminal purpose of robbing two of the area's sons. Series of assaults. This incident is just one link in a long series of assaults documented by residents according to other accounts shared by Abdel Rahim Ahmed, including a previous assault suffered by the nephew of one of them while he was sitting in front of his house occupied with his phone; he was surprised by a motorcycle approaching to snatch his device. Despite the thieves firing shots toward his feet to intimidate him, the young man bravely pursued them until he trapped them in a dead-end street, which forced them to retreat and fire randomly into the air and the ground before fleeing. Abdel Rahim says that such incidents have shaken the security of the residents and pushed some returnees to flee again; as he tells the story of his friend who recently returned with his family from the Arab Republic of Egypt to settle in his home in the Haj Yousif (Al-Radmiya) area, but he was forced to leave it and resort to renting a house in the Shambat area next to the open space (Al-Baraha). This harsh decision came as a result of repeated incidents of armed robbery and intimidation by the 'Kadmol' gangs—as he described them—in his previous neighborhood, only to taste the bitterness of displacement again after his original home was subjected to comprehensive looting (shafshafa) at the outbreak of the war.