Zeinab’s attempt to escape the war-ravaged city of Khartoum in search of safety was thwarted by paramilitary fighters, who subjected her and other women on the journey to harm, denying them the chance to find refuge.
In mid-May, one month after fighting broke between Sudan’s army chief and his deputy (head of the paramilitary group RSF) Zeinab says, herself, her sister and other women who were fleeing Khartoum in a minibus were raped.
The vehicle transporting them was stopped at an RSF checkpoint. There, fighters separated the female from male passengers.
Terrified, they were marched into a warehouse where a man “in civilian clothes who seemed to be their commander” ordered Zeinab to the ground.
The woman tried to hide her younger sister, in vain. As she attempted to resist she was soon obliged to give up, she recounted her ordeal from another country where she found refuge.
“I was pinned down” one man pointing a rifle to her chest “while the other raped me,” Zeinab told AFP. “When he was done, they switched. They wanted to keep my sister with them. I begged them on my hands and knees to let her go.”
“I was sure we were about to die,” she told AFP, revealing, her younger sister and two other women, one with an infant daughter, were all raped.
Rape, a weapon of war
Dozens of women have reported similar attacks — in their homes, by the roadside and in commandeered hotels — since the war erupted in mid-April between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.
Zeinab and the other women raped on that fateful day were eventually allowed to leave and escaped to Madani, 200 kilometers away, where they reported the attack to police and went to a hospital.
“We’re not the first people this has happened to, or the last,” she said.
Sudan’s war has claimed at least 1,800 lives and displaced more than 1.5 million people.
The horrors of the conflict have been compounded by a wave of sexual violence, say survivors, medics and activists who spoke to AFP.