Salwa Abdallah was recuperating from a caesarean section and tending to her one-month old baby when soldiers from the Rapid Support Forces barged into her home in Sudan’s eastern El Gezira state late last month.
They accused her of loyalty to the army and its allies, their rivals in an 18-month war.
“They said ‘You killed us, so today we’ll kill you and rape your girls,” she said, sheltering under a makeshift sheet in the town of New Halfa, where she arrived after walking for days on foot with her elderly mother and children.
She said the soldiers chased them out of their village with whips and later shot at them on motorcycles, which two other victims of the attack also mentioned.
13 victims of a series of intense, violent raids in eastern Gezira over the past two weeks, which affected at least 65 villages and towns according to activists.
The UN says some 135,000 people have been displaced, largely to Kassala, Gedaref, and River Nile states, which are already packed with many of the more than 11 million internally displaced by the devastating war that broke out in April 2023.
“I am shocked and deeply appalled that human rights violations of the kind witnessed in Darfur last year … are being repeated in El Gezira State. These are atrocious crimes,” said the UN’s top official in Sudan, Clementine Nkweta-Salami, referring to attacks last year that prompted accusations of ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity from the United States and others.
The war has unleashed hunger across the country, erased most signs of a functioning state in RSF-held areas, and prompted fears of fragmentation.
Both sides are accused of hindering much needed international assistance.
A spokesperson for the RSF did not immediately respond for comment.
“These are simple people who should be living safely in their villages. They are not fighters and there is not a single army garrison in the area that could justify the RSF’s accusations that they are working with the army,” said army spokesman Brigadier General Nabil Abdallah, accusing the RSF of a campaign of resettlement.
Though El Gezira state has been subject to a violent looting campaign since the RSF took control in December, the defection of its chief in the state unleashed a series of revenge attacks.
Item 1 of 6 A Sudanese family, displaced from Gezira state due to RSF violence, sit at a shelter in New Halfa, Sudan, November 3rd, 2024.
africanews/Hauwa M.
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