Three years of messages at once - a chronicle of Sudan's war pours in as trapped reporter's phone turns on

Soon after Mohamed Suleiman entered the telecoms office in the coastal city of Port Sudan on 13 January he started to cry. He hadn't heard his phone ring for most of Sudan's civil war, which began exactly three years ago following a power struggle between the army and its then-ally, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group. The journalist...

Soon after Mohamed Suleiman entered the telecoms office in the coastal city of Port Sudan on 13 January he started to cry.

He hadn't heard his phone ring for most of Sudan's civil war, which began exactly three years ago following a power struggle between the army and its then-ally, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group.

The journalist and academic had made it to Port Sudan after being trapped in the western city of el-Fasher, largely cut off from the world by a communications blackout and unable to convey fully the horrors he was witnessing.

"I was flustered because people were talking on their phones (inside the office)," he tells the BBC.