Millions trapped in their homes. Bodies litter the streets. The health sector is crumbling.
It's the speed of the collapse of Khartoum, Sudan's war-torn capital, that's so dizzying, even by the standards of modern warfare. Hard to believe it was a normal city just last Friday. Pretty typical scene from my trip to Khartoum last month - young people taking Instagrammable pictures at dusk on a bridge over the Nile.
Many signs of strain, too - economy tanking, power cutting regularly, food prices soaring. Also: talk of a quiet military build-up.

Leaving Tigray weeks ago, I took the only way out — a spectacular 300-mile route through a scorched corner of northern Ethiopia.
Now that route is at the heart of a crisis that threatens millions of lives. The road passed into Afar, one of the world's most inhospitable regions. We crossed plains covered in dried lava, salt-filled lakes and numerous militia checkposts.

Back from three weeks in Ethiopia, mostly in Tigray, where there was a communications blackout which meant I couldn't post updates from the ground. Story in today's paper, but here are some images and thoughts on what I saw. An Ethiopian prisoner of war camp at Adi Isher, 30 miles south of Mekelle. The soldiers had been captured a few days earlier, after heavy fighting, and their faces were clouded with so much: resignation, resentment, fear, fury. Clearly a huge loss for Ethiopia's military.

This kind of story comes along rarely.

15 years ago, Hollywood made a movie about Paul Rusesabagina, an unflappable hotelier who saved 1,268 people in the 1994 Rwanda genocide.

On Aug. 31 he dramatically resurfaced in Kigali, cuffed and facing terror charges. How? Why? @nytimes reporters in Africa, Europe and the Middle East set out to solve the mystery.

The reporting took us around the globe as we re-traced his steps, trying to understand how a human rights icon once the toast of America could end up in such a predicament.

One night seven years ago, I returned to my home in Islamabad to find security agents at my door. They handed me an expulsion later and gave me 72 hours to leave. I was stunned. I had been in Pakistan for a decade. I couldn’t figure out what I had done.
#NineLivesOfPakistan Over the next three days, all my attempts to stay in the country failed. Doors closed in my face. Intelligence agents detained me and locked me into a hotel room. But my troubles were just one small part of a far bigger story.

A short thread on the virus in Egypt, a.k.a. the most populous country in the Middle East. So far, the government stresses its problem is relatively small and contained. “Thank God, Egypt is one of the least affected countries,” tourism minister Khaled el-Enany said Tuesday. Growing evidence suggests there’s reason to worry. By our count, at least 104 people, mostly tourists, have tested positive since returning from Egypt in February. That's far more than the 67 cases declared by the government inside the country.

The publisher of the New York Times, A.G. Sulzberger, published an important article today about press freedom. He mentioned an incident in which I had to leave Egypt in a rush, fearing arrest, two years ago. Some context on that: nytimes.com/2019/09/23/opi… The incident occurred in August 2017 after @NYTmag published my story about Giulio Regeni, an Italian student found dead in Cairo. Italy accuses Egypt of involvement, and Egypt denies. It's a sensitive issue.
nytimes.com/2017/08/15/mag…

I interviewed General Mohamed Hamdan, known as Hemeti, whose fighters led the brutal assault on protesters in Khartoum on June 3. Story: nyti.ms/2KhC9eN We met at army headquarters, at his sprawling office overlooking the protest site where the Rapid Support forces are accused of rape, pillage and dozens of killings. Hemeti was composed, articulate and unapologetic.

In Yemen an old dilemma took new form. We travel to crisis zones with bundles of hard cash that might go a long way for a hunger-stricken family. Shouldn't we pause, put down our notebooks, and help out?
nyti.ms/2ztWuGM That's a question many readers asked after the death of Amal Hussain, the 7-year-old Yemen girl in a haunting @TylerHicksPhoto photo. Amal died a few days after we met her. Some wanted to know if we did anything to save her.