On the edge

Sudan: A return to genocidal killings in Darfur is possible again | Jamie Dean

Stuart Price/AMIS/AP

In a crowded hospital along the war-torn border in eastern Chad, 11-year-old Kaltouma shares a grim agony with her 3-year-old sister, Hilam: After the Sudanese government bombed and raided their village in Sudan's western region of Darfur last month, each little girl lost a leg.

Doctors amputated Kaltouma's leg first, removing the ruined limb above the knee. Days later, doctors conceded they couldn't save Hilam's tiny, shrapnel-ridden leg either.

From Hilam's bedside, Ashua Osman Youssouf, the girls' mother, told Reuters news agency that a third daughter was also wounded in the attack, and that their home in Darfur burned as they fled for refuge in neighboring Chad: "I don't know what to do. . . . My children are ill and all I want is for them to be better."