This story includes graphic descriptions of sexual violence, including against minors. Some readers may find this disturbing.
Adre, Chad – Islam’s* life was changed forever by an air strike in November 2023.
The young woman from el-Geneina, Sudan, had been preparing for her exams when a strike landed directly on her family’s home.
Now, sitting in one of the countless straw structures in a sprawling refugee camp in Adre just over the border in eastern Chad, Islam, 22, sobs as she recalls what happened to her.
After she and her family survived the air strike, she was kidnapped by members of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group that has been fighting Sudan’s army for two years. They threatened to kill her family if she did not submit to their demands.
“If they had killed me, it would have been better than what they did to me,” she says, tears staining her pink hijab.
The fighters took Islam to a remote village, confined her and raped her repeatedly over two days.
“One would stay for two or three hours. … Then his other friend would come,” she says.
“I couldn’t breathe,” she adds, explaining how the trauma triggered chronic asthma, something she didn’t have before the attack.
“When I tried to protect myself, they started beating me.”
After two days, the men took her back, but by then, her home had been looted, and everyone and everything was gone. She missed her brothers and sisters.