Gedaref, Sudan ¨C When paramilitary fighters closed in on the Sudanese border town and oil field of Heglig, Dowa Hamed, who is paraplegic, could only cling to her husband¡¯s back as they fled, ¡°like a child,¡± she said.
Now the 25-year-old mother of five ¡ª paralyzed from the waist down ¡ª lies shell-shocked on a cot in the Abu al-Naga displacement camp, a dusty transit center just outside the eastern city of Gedaref, nearly 800 kilometers from home.
But her family¡¯s actual journey was much longer, crossing the South Sudan border twice and passing from one group of fighters to another, as they ran for their lives with their children in tow alongside hundreds of others.
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