Delhi:

Sudanese women have alleged targeted sexual violence against them by Arab forces in war torn Sudan.

According to source, a 19-year-old girl was abducted and raped by four men over three days. A 24-year-old girl was raped by armed men in her home just a few meters away from her mother. A 28-year-old women’s rights activist, picked up by men on the doorstep of her home and then raped while being held for hours in an abandoned house.

Young Masalit women rape victims said they were sexually assaulted amid the war in Sudan by members of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), an Arab-dominated paramilitary group, and allied Arab militiamen. The assaults, they said, took place during weeks of attacks earlier this year in El Geneina, capital of Sudan’s West Darfur region.

Among the survivors of the earlier attacks: a 15-year-old girl who described seeing her parents killed and enduring an hours-long ordeal in which five RSF fighters raped her and a friend – then shot the friend dead.

Eight of the women said their ethnicity was specifically invoked by their assailants. The men mentioned their Masalit identity, they said, or used ethnic slurs for the Masalit and other darker-skinned non-Arabs.

A UN official said that 11 months of brutal fighting is driving a hunger crisis in Sudan, with some areas likely to experience catastrophic levels of food insecurity by the lean season in May. He said that sexual violence against women is on rise in Sudan, which is a matter of concern.

“The war between the Sudanese army and the rival paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has left 18 million people – more than a third of the population – facing acute food insecurity” he added.

“The majority, or about 90 per cent, are in conflict hotspots in the Darfur and Kordofan region, and in Khartoum and Al Jazirah states” he said.

“Currently, around 730,000 people in Sudan are suffering from malnutrition, which is soaring to alarming rates and already claiming young lives” he remarked.