Survivors recount RSF gang rape in Sudan; infants among victims

In exclusive testimonies, women recount harrowing attacks by paramilitary forces as a senior doctor reveals that 14 female infants have been raped.Published On 7 Jan 2026In Sudan, victims of sexual violence are often forced to suffer in silence, their tears shed where no one can hear them. But for women like Mariam*, the horror of war followed her even as she tried to flee.Attempting to escape from Gezira State to Khartoum early last year, Mariam’s vehicle was stopped by armed men. She was the only passenger singled out.“We were coming from Gezira State… They stopped us on the street and forced us down,” Mariam told Al Jazeera Arabic’s correspondent Asma Mohammed.“They said they wanted to search us. Two of them consulted with each other, then called me over,” she recounted, her voice trembling. “They took me to a place… It was an empty room with a mattress. They told me to lie down, and then they raped me.”Mariam returned to her family in the waiting car, shattered.“She told us immediately what happened… How many of them there were,” her aunt told Al Jazeera. “Of course, they were from the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).”‘Is there a girl in this house?’Mariam’s story is not unique. In el-Fasher, the tragedy repeats itself with even greater brutality.Um Kulthum*, a medical student, told Al Jazeera she was forced to witness mass rape and murder before becoming a victim herself.“The RSF forces entered … and besieged the area,” Um Kulthum said. “They killed my uncle, the one who raised me … right in front of us.“We were four girls, along with our neighbour’s daughter. The RSF forces then gang-raped us in a brutal manner.”These exclusive accounts align with a harrowing new report released last November by the Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa (SIHA), which documented nearly 1,300 cases of sexual and gender-based violence across 14 states since the war began in April 2023.