‘The janjaweed are coming’: RSF attack on a Darfur camp recalls atrocities from earlier era in Sudan

CAIRO — Umm al-Kheir Bakheit was 13 when she arrived at Zamzam camp in the early 2000s, fleeing the janjaweed, the infamous Arab militias terrorizing Sudan’s Darfur region. She grew up, married and had three children in the camp.

Now 31, Bakheit fled Zamzam as the janjaweed’s descendants — a paramilitary force called the Rapid Support Forces — stormed into the camp last month and went on a three-day rampage, killing at least 400 people, after months of starving its population with a siege.

Bakheit and a dozen other residents and aid workers told the Associated Press that RSF fighters gunned down men and women in the streets, beat and tortured others and raped and sexually assaulted women and girls.

The April 11 attack, whose details have emerged in the weeks since, was the worst ever at Zamzam, Sudan’s largest displacement camp, in its 20 years of existence. Once home to some 500,000 residents, the camp has been virtually emptied. The paramilitary fighters burned down whole swaths of houses, markets and other buildings.

“It’s a nightmare come true,” Bakheit said. “They attacked mercilessly.”

Months of famine

The attack on Zamzam underscored that atrocities have not ended in Sudan’s two-year war, even as the RSF has suffered heavy setbacks, losing ground recently to the military in other parts of the country.

Throughout the war, the RSF has been accused by residents and rights groups of mass killings and rapes in attacks on towns and cities, particularly in Darfur. Many of RSF’s fighters originated from the janjaweed, who became notorious for atrocities in the early 2000s against people identifying as East African or Central African in Darfur.

“Targeting civilians and using rape as a war weapon and destroying full villages and mass killing, all that has been the reality of the Sudan war for two years,” said Marion Ramstein, emergency field coordinator in North Darfur for Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF.

Zamzam camp was established in 2004 to house people driven from their homes by janjaweed attacks. Just south of El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur province, it swelled over the years to cover an area 5 miles long by about 2 miles wide.

In spring 2024, the RSF clamped a siege around Zamzam as it moved against El Fasher, one of the last strongholds of the Sudanese military in Darfur.

Many have died of starvation under the siege, Bakheit and others said. “For too long, there was no option but to eat grass and tree leaves,” she said.

Famine was declared in the camp in August after RSF attacks forced the United Nations and aid groups to pull out of Zamzam. The true death toll of the famine is unknown.

Ahlam al-Nour, a 44-year-old mother of five, said her youngest child, a 3-year-old, died of severe malnutrition in December.

The RSF has repeatedly claimed Zamzam and nearby Abu Shouk camp were used as bases by the military and its allied militias. It said in a statement that it took control of the camp on April 11 to “secure civilians and humanitarian workers.” It denied its fighters targeted civilians. The RSF did not reply to Associated Press questions about the attack.

‘The janjaweed are coming’

Bakheit, who lived on the southern edge of Zamzam, said she heard loud explosions and heavy gunfire around 2 a.m. on April 11. The RSF started with heavy shelling, and people panicked as the night sky lighted up and houses burst into flames, Bakheit said.

By sunrise, the RSF-led fighters broke into her area, storming houses, kicking residents out and seizing valuables, Bakheit and others said. They spoke of sexual harassment and rape of young women and girls by RSF fighters.

“The children were screaming, ‘The janjaweed are coming!’” Bakheit said.

About two dozen women who fled to the nearby town of Tawila reported that they were raped during the attack, said Ramstein, who was in Tawila at the time. She said the number is probably much higher because many women are too ashamed to report rapes.

“We’re talking about looting. We’re talking about beating. We’re talking about killing, but also about a lot of rape,” she said.

The paramilitary fighters rounded up hundreds of people, including women and children. Bakheit said fighters whipped, beat, insulted and sexually harassed her in front of her children as they drove her family from their home.

She said she saw houses burning and at least five bodies in the street, including two women and a boy, the ground around them soaked in blood.

The fighters gathered Bakheit and about 200 other people in an open area and interrogated them, asking about anyone fighting for the military and its allied militias.

“They tortured us,” said Al-Nour, who was among them.

Al-Nour and Bakheit said they saw RSF fighters shoot two young men in the head during the interrogation. They shot a third man in the leg and he lay bleeding and screaming, they said.

One video shared online by RSF members showed fighters wearing RSF uniforms by nine bodies motionless on the ground. A fighter says that he is inside Zamzam camp and that the militants would kill people “like this,” pointing to the bodies.

Much of the camp was burned

The RSF rampage, which also targeted Abu Shouk camp north of El Fasher, went on for days.

The fighters destroyed Zamzam’s only functioning medical center, killing nine workers from Relief International. They killed at least 23 people at a religious school, mostly young students studying the Quran, according to the General Coordination for Displaced Persons and Refugees in Darfur.

Much of the south and east of the camp was burned to the ground, the aid group said.

Satellite imagery from April 16 showed thick black smoke rising from several fires in the camp. More than half a square mile appeared to have been burned down between April 10 and April 16, said a report by the Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab, which analyzed and published the imagery. That is about 10% of the camp’s area.

The imagery showed vehicles around the camp and at its main access points, which the Yale lab said were probably RSF checkpoints controlling entry and exit.

By April 14, only about 2,100 people remained in the camp, according to the U.N.’s International Organization for Migration.

An arduous journey

After being detained for three hours, Bakheit, Al-Nour and dozens of other women and children were released by the paramilitary fighters.

They walked for hours under the searing summer sun. Bakheit and Al-Nour said that as they passed through the camp, they went by burning houses, the destroyed main market and bodies of men, women and children in the streets, some of them charred.

They joined an exodus of others fleeing Zamzam and heading to the town of Tawila, 40 miles west of El Fasher. Al-Nour said she saw at least three people who died on the road, apparently from exhaustion and the effects of starvation and dehydration.

“The janjaweed, once again, kill and torture us,” Bakheit said. “Like my mother did about 20 years ago, I had no option but to take my children and leave.”

Magdy writes for the Associated Press.