The heroic race to rescue 370 orphans from a war zone—twice

livemint.com:

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. On the fourth night of the war, Dr. Abeer Abdullah sent off a desperate plea for help.

Abdullah had spent the past days and nights racing to care for 370 children at the al-Mygoma Home for Orphaned Children, Sudan’s biggest orphanage, where she is medical director. The home was caught in the middle of some of the heaviest fighting in the capital Khartoum after a simmering rivalry between Sudan’s two most powerful generals boiled over into all-out violence. The war had left Mygoma with no nurses and fewer than a dozen adults to care for the children, most of whom were under the age of 1.

Abdullah, a reserved, Saudi Arabia-trained general practitioner, was the only doctor. Power cuts had shut down the orphanage’s air conditioning in the up to 115-degree heat. Explosions shook the walls.

Overwhelmed caregivers struggled to feed and hydrate newborn babies and others suffering from complex disabilities. More than once, they rushed from one room to another just to find another child lifeless in his crib. That fourth night, Abdullah sneaked out of Mygoma’s metal gate, clutching her phone and praying that the darkness would protect her from snipers positioned on nearby buildings.

Next to a tree in the orphanage’s front yard, her screen lit up with a sliver of signal. Abdullah tapped out a Facebook post: “Save al-Mygoma." Over the following weeks and months, Abdullah’s message prompted the extraordinary mobilization of a group of mostly Sudanese civilians to save the Mygoma orphans. The effort has taken some of the children and their caregivers on a perilous odyssey across four Sudanese cities and nearly 1,000 miles, hoping for safety but always aware that the war could catch up with them once