Feature
Mogadem Ibrahim’s account of recovery was about work he could no longer do. In an Associated Press report published on 29 April 2026, the 18-year-old labourer described losing his fingers in an explosion outside his home in Omdurman, across the Nile from Khartoum. He had mistaken the object for part of a car.
“I was supporting my family and now I’m sitting here and doing nothing,” he told AP. The injury had taken away more than the use of his hand: it had interrupted his role as an earner. AP, reproduced by Ahram
His experience exposes a difficulty hidden inside the language of Sudan’s recovery. People can be living at home, moving through their neighbourhoods and trying to earn while the spaces around them remain dangerous. A change in military control does not tell them which ordinary objects or buildings are safe. Nor does removing an explosive restore the income of someone already injured.
AP’s journalists were accompanied by a military-media representative during their visit and interviews; the agency said it retained editorial control. Its April reporting captured both official efforts to warn residents and people whom those warnings had not reached. An official described messages delivered through mosques, markets, broadcasting and schools. Several injured interviewees said they had not seen or heard warnings. AP
Knowing about the danger was not the only difficulty. Some people interviewed by AP feared that reporting unexploded weapons could bring questioning about why they possessed them. That concern does not establish that anyone was punished for making a report. It does reveal a predicament that an awareness message alone cannot resolve: asking residents to report hazards also asks them to trust the response.
There is evidence that reporting can bring help. The UN Mine Action Service, UNMAS, described community call-outs in its January–March 2026 factsheet, often following risk-education sessions. But the existence of that channel and the concerns heard by AP can coexist. Neither tells us how many residents can use it confidently. UNMAS
Learning a changed danger
The people responding are adapting too. Before becoming a deminer, Hiba Al-Emam worked as an agriculture engineer in Sudan’s Blue Nile region. She had seen how explosive remnants made farming, fetching water and herding frightening activities. She took basic mine-action training in 2021 and joined a team with the Sudanese organisation NUMAD in September 2025, according to an October account published by OCHA and co-authored with the Danish Refugee Council. OCHA/DRC, 5 October
That earlier experience did not make the urban war’s hazards familiar. Mohammed, another deminer quoted in the account, described encountering new threats despite 17 years in mine action. In May 2026, DRC delivered a 25-day advanced course for 15 personnel from Sudanese mine-action organisations and the national mine-action centre. The training included work in buildings and urban clearance; graduates could also take team-leader roles.
This is part of rebuilding civilian capacity, not just removing objects. Specialists need skills suited to places where people hope to sleep, work and restart production. Training a team leader can help an organisation field another team; it is not evidence that every neighbourhood now has one.
The October account shows how closely those tasks can overlap. At the Arab Company for Livestock Development, NUMAD and DRC teams worked across workers’ housing, offices, hatcheries and production areas. The organisations reported neutralising more than 370 unexploded items at premises described as supporting the livelihoods of 450 workers. OCHA/DRC
The workers’ presence in that account gives the clearance a purpose beyond a tally. Housing and production space both had to be made safer. Yet the report described conditions for resuming activity, not proof that production restarted or that 450 people returned to their jobs. It was an implementing-partner account, not an independent assessment of restored livelihoods.
A service that did return
A more definite gain can be found at Khartoum’s airport. UNMAS reported that teams removed more than 800 explosive hazards there, contributing to the resumption of UN Humanitarian Air Service flights on 26 February. The World Food Programme, which manages the service, separately recorded that start date in its February country brief. By 9 April, WFP said the service was flying to Khartoum three times a week. UNMAS · WFP February brief · WFP, 9 April
The airport provides a documented example of a service operating again. At the company, the October account described safer conditions for resuming work, not a verified restart. For Mogadem, the April interview records a different cost: an injury had taken away the labour through which he supported his family.