Sudanese women describe being gang-raped in ethnically targeted attacks by Arab forces

By Stabroek News On In Stabroek Weekend |
A 24-year-old mother of a toddler said she became pregnant after two gunmen assaulted her in El Geneina earlier this year. She said she was attacked after she returned to her burned home to salvage some belongings. REUTERS/Zohra Bensemra
A 24-year-old mother of a toddler said she became pregnant after two gunmen assaulted her in El Geneina earlier this year. She said she was attacked after she returned to her burned home to salvage some belongings. REUTERS/Zohra Bensemra

(Reuters) Rape is widespread amid the war in Sudan. Young women from the ethnic-African Masalit tribe say they were sexually assaulted at gunpoint by RSF paramilitary and Arab militia forces during attacks on the city of El Geneina in West Darfur. ‘For three days, they were raping me,’ one teenager said.

A 24-year-old raped by armed men in her home just feet from her mother. A 19-year-old abducted and raped by four men over three days. A 28-year-old women’s rights activist, seized by men on the doorstep of her home and then raped while being held for hours in an abandoned house.

They are among 11 young Masalit women interviewed by Reuters who said they were sexually assaulted amid the war in Sudan by members of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), an Arab-dominated paramilitary group, and allied Arab militiamen. The assaults, they said, took place during weeks of attacks earlier this year in El Geneina, capital of Sudan’s West Darfur region.