Nierteti — Three sisters aged between 18 and 23 were severely beaten and raped at gunpoint by a group of unidentified gunmen, who raided Khor Bared farms, nine kilometres west of Nierteti in Central Darfur on Friday. Two other farmers were also injured in the attack.

A community leader in the Nierteti camps for displaced people, Adam Okro, told Radio Dabanga that the gunmen descended on the area on Friday , and accosted the three young women as they were tending their farm. The women were bound, beaten, raped at gunpoint, and left in a wadi with various head and leg injuries.

In the same incident, the gunmen attacked bound farmers Abdeen Abdulmahmoud (28) and Ahmed Idris Ismail (34) hand and foot as they were planting crops. Okro told Radio Dabanga that the gunmen beat the farmers, who live in the Northern Nierteti camp for displaced people, with rifle butts and whips.

He says that a report was opened with the Nierteti police and the injured were taken to Nierteti Hospital for treatment.

Conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV)

As previously reported by Radi Dabanga, reports of conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) being systematically employed as an instrument of war, have been endemic since the outbreak of the current hostilities that erupted in mid-April 2023 between Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). This follows a similar pattern to past hostilities over decades, including the Darfur conflict. A new report by the Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa (SIHA) Network, that shows sexual violence to be the 'forgotten atrocities' of the Sudan war, examines and underscores the dire circumstances faced by Sudanese women amid the ongoing crisis.