Newscasts - Sudan's RSF chases civilians out of villages in violent raids

Accor SA

04/11/2024 17:53

Click the following link to watch video: https://share.newscasts.refinitiv.com/link?entryId=1_3ugh8q25&referenceId=tag:reuters.com,2024:newsml_RW701004112024RP1_K15&pageId=Newscasts
Source: 'Reuters - General news videos'

Description: The United Nations says some 135,000 people have been displaced
from a state in eastern Sudan in a series of revenge attacks by the
paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. Sean Hogan has more.
Short Link: https://refini.tv/3CmGI3C

Video Transcript:

Salwa Abdallah was recuperating from a caesarean section when soldiers burst
into her home. They were from the Rapid Support Forces, one side in Sudan's
19-month-old war. They accused her of supporting their rivals, the Sudanese
army and its allies, and threatened to kill her, her child and her mother, and
rape her daughters.

I gave them the money I had. They asked me to give them my jewelry. I told
them I will give them my jewelry. They told me, “Give us the jewelry
while we go to another home and come back to you.” Once they left to the
neighbor's home, I took my daughters quickly despite my c-section and moved my
mother and we hid in the animals' enclosure.

The incident took place in Sudan's El Gezira last month. The eastern state has
suffered a series of intense, violent raids over the past two weeks affecting,
according to activists, at least 65 villages and towns. Having walked for
days, Abdallah and her family are now at a camp in neighboring Kassala state.
They are among the 135,000 people the United Nations says have been displaced
by this latest burst of violence. El Gezira had already been subject to a
violent looting campaign by the RSF since it took control last December. But
the defection last month of its chief in the state unleashed a series of
revenge attacks. The Wad Madani Resistance Committee, a pro-democracy group,
named 169 people killed since the violence began on October 20, though in a
statement it said there were hundreds more. The worst incident was in
al-Sireha, where the committee said 124 people were killed on October 25.
Video verified by Reuters showed RSF soldiers lining up men. Many of them were
elderly, and some in blood-splattered clothes. Another video verified by
Reuters showed dozens of bodies wrapped up in sheets for burial. The RSF has
denied ordering the attacks and said they were the result of the army arming
local communities. The war has unleashed a hunger crisis across Sudan, with
both sides accused of hindering international aid. Back in Kassala state,
Hashim Bashir sits in the bus that brought him here from his home in El
Gezira. His leg was amputated before the war began. But his disability didn't
stop soldiers from throwing him out of his home.

They are very vicious. They don't have mercy for the old, women, men, or
children. They beat. If you survived their gunshots, they hit you in your
head. If you survived this, they will beat you with a whip just like children
and they make you cry like children.

His niece, Faeza Mohammed, says soldiers beat her uncle and threw his
wheelchair on top of him. She was also beaten, she says, including her earring
being ripped from her ear. "They displaced us, burned down our homes and
starved us," she says, "may God inflict harm on them."