Survivors recount horrors of RSF attack on Darfur camp

People prepare local crops of sugar cane and watermelons for sale, at Abu Shouk refugee camp, where they live on the outskirts of El Fasher, North Darfur, Sudan, Oct. 8, 2010. (AP Photo/John Heilprin, File)

CAIRO (AP) - 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 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 was the worst ever suffered by 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 paramilitaries burned down large swaths of houses, markets and other buildings.

"It's a nightmare come true," Bakheit said. "They attacked mercilessly."

The attack on Zamzam underscored that atrocities have not ended in Sudan's 2-year-old 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 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, MSF emergency field coordinator in North Darfur.

Zamzam Camp was established in 2004 to house people driven from their homes by janjaweed attacks. Located just south of el-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur province, it swelled over the years to cover an area 8 kilometers (5 miles) long by about 3 kilometers (2 miles) wide.