When rebels stormed into a village last month in Sudan, they gunned down civilians in their homes or as they tried to flee
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.
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.
