It was a job she had dreamed of since she visited the museum as a child. Its current location is close to the military’s headquarters, where fighting has been heavy, preventing access to the museum.Ībdalla, who teaches zoology at the University of Khartoum, began working at the museum in 2006, and was appointed director of the facility in 2020. It was annexed to the University of Khartoum two years after Sudan won independence in 1956. The facility was established about a century ago as part of Gordon Memorial College, an educational institution built in the early 1900s when Sudan was a part of the British empire. The zoo, which is housed inside the University of Khartoum, is one of the oldest in Sudan. Roughly 500 civilians have been killed in the fighting so far, according to Sudan’s doctors’ syndicate, though the true number of dead is believed to be higher. Residents fleeing the capital have described seeing bodies littering sidewalks and central squares, particularly in areas not far from the museum. The urban combat has badly damaged infrastructure and properties and poses great risk to civilians trying to move in the city streets.

The conflict has turned much of Khartoum and the adjacent city of Omdurman into a battlefield, with both sides using heavy weapons, including artillery and airstrikes, inside urban areas.

The animals in that country 2021