Villagers offer harrowing accounts of one of the deadliest attacks in Sudan's civil war

San Francisco Chronicle​

5 hours ago

CAIRO (AP) — When Ahlam Saeed awoke last month to the sound of gunfire and roaring vehicle motors, the 43-year-old widow rushed outside her home in war-torn Sudan to find a line of at least two dozen vehicles, many of them motorcycles carrying armed fighters.
'They were firing at everything and in every direction,' the mother of four said. 'In an instant, all of us in the village were fleeing for safety." Many people were gunned down in their houses or while trying to flee. At least 200 people were killed, including many women and children, in the community of straw homes, according to a rights group tracking Sudan's civil war.
Saeed and her children — ages 9 to 15 — were among those who survived after rebel fighters rampaged through Shag al-Num, the small farming village of several thousand people in Sudan's Kordofan region. In interviews with The Associated Press, Saeed and four other villagers described the July 12 attack, one of the deadliest assaults since the war began more than two years ago over a power struggle between commanders of the military and the rival paramilitary group known as the Rapid Support Forces, or RSF.
The villagers' accounts add to the devastating toll of the conflict, which started in April 2023 and has wrecked the country in northeastern African. The fighting has killed more than 40,000 people, displaced as many as 14 million, caused disease outbreaks and pushed many places to the brink of famine.
Atrocities, including mass killings of civilians and mass rape, have also been reported, particularly in Darfur, triggering an investigation by the International Criminal Court into potential war crimes and crimes against humanity.
'Hell's door was opened'
The villagers from Shag al-Num said RSF fighters and their allied Janjaweed militias stormed into the community, looting houses and robbing residents, especially of women's gold. Some victims were held at gunpoint.
Some young villagers attempted to fight back by taking up rifles to defend their homes. The RSF fighters knocked them down and continued their rampage, witnesses said.
'It was as if the hell's door was opened,' Saeed said, sobbing. Her straw house and neighboring homes were burned down, and one RSF fighter seized her necklace. 'We were dying of fear,' she said.
The villagers said the fighters also sexually abused or raped many women. One of the women said she saw three fighters wearing RSF uniforms dragging a young woman into an abandoned house. She said she later met the woman, who said she was raped.
Satellite imagery from July 13 and 14 showed 'intentional arson attacks' and 'a large smoke point' over the village as well as 'razed and smoldering' buildings, the Humanitarian Research Lab at the Yale School of Public Health reported.
In the two-day RSF attack in Shaq al-Noum and surrounding areas, more than 450 civilians, including 35 children and two pregnant women, were killed, according to UNICEF.
After the assault, many of the survivors fled, leaving behind a mostly deserted village.
The RSF did not respond to questions about the attack from the AP.
Both sides seek control of oil-rich Kordofan region
Beyond the village, the oil-rich Kordofan region has emerged as a major front line following the military's recapture of Khartoum earlier this year. The warring parties have raced for control of the three-province region stretching across southern and central Sudan because it controls vital supply lines.
'Kordofan has become the most strategic area of the country,' said Cameron Hudson, an Africa expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
The fighting has exacerbated the already dire conditions in the region.
In Kadugli, the provincial capital city of South Kordofan province, 'roads have been cut off, supply lines have collapsed and residents are walking miles just to search for salt or matches,' said Kadry Furany, country director for Sudan at Mercy Corps aid group.
A mental health therapist in Obeid, the provincial capital of North Kordofan province, said the city received waves of displaced people in recent weeks, all from areas recently ambushed by the RSF.
The therapist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of concerns about her safety, said she supported 10 women and girls who endured sexual abuse, including rape, in RSF-seized areas in July alone. Among the victims were two women from Shag al-Num village, she said.
'The conditions are tragic,' she said.
Another epicenter of starvation and disease
To the west of the Kordofan region is el-Fasher, the military's last stronghold in the five-province Darfur region. The city — which has been under constant RSF bombardment for over a year — is one of the hardest hit by hunger and disease outbreaks, according to the U.N.
The World Food Program has been unable to deliver aid by land. It warned this month that 300,000 people, who are 'trapped, hungry and running out of time,' are at risk of starvation.
'Everyone in el-Fasher is facing a daily struggle to survive,' said Eric Perdison, the food program's director for eastern and southern Africa. 'Without immediate and sustained access, lives will be lost.'
The paramilitaries and their Janjaweed allies imposed a total blockade of el-Fasher, leaving no route out of the city that the RSF does not control, according to satellite imagery recently analyzed by the humanitarian lab at Yale.
The blockade caused food prices to spike up to 460% higher than in the rest of Sudan, according to the African Center for Justice and Peace Studies. Most staples are scarce or no longer available.
Civilians who want to leave the city are required to pass through a single RSF-controlled point, where they have been robbed, forced to pay bribes or killed, according to the Yale lab, aid workers and residents.
On Aug. 2, a group of people, including women and children, attempted to flee the city. When they reached Garni, a village on a crucial supply route just northwest of the city, RSF fighters ambushed the area, residents said.
'They tell you to leave, then they kill you,' said al-Amin Ammar, a 63-year-old who said he escaped because he is old. 'It's a death trap.'
At least 14 people were killed, and dozens of others were wounded in the village, said the Emergency Lawyers rights group said.
Aside from fighting, the region has been ravaged by lack of food and a cholera outbreak, said Adam Regal, a spokesman for a local aid group known as General Coordination. Many people have nothing to eat and resorted to cattle fodder to survive, he said. Some have not found even fodder, he said.
He shared images of emaciated children with their exhausted, malnourished mothers on the outskirts of el-Fasher or the nearby town of Tawila.
'People don't await food or medicine,' he said, 'rather they await death.'
The 12-year-old son of Sabah Hego, a widow, was admitted with cholera to a makeshift hospital in Tweila, joining dozens of other patients there.
'He is sick, and dying,' Hego said of her youngest child. 'He is not alone. There are many like him.'