By Reade Levinson
Jan 30 (Reuters) – Paramilitary fighters kidnapped children during their takeover of the Sudanese city of al-Fashir in October and in other attacks in the Darfur region over the course of Sudan’s civil war, in some cases killing their parents first, witnesses say.
The descriptions, based on Reuters interviews with more than two dozen witnesses, included four accounts of fighters from the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) telling families the children would be used as slaves, to herd animals.
The RSF has been locked in war with Sudan’s army since April 2023 over which side will run a country endowed with rich mineral reserves, plentiful arable land and Red Sea ports. While human rights groups have reported alleged war crimes by both sides including the recruitment of child combatants, the abduction and enslavement of children by the RSF and allied militias has not been previously reported by other media.
The 26 witnesses spoke to Reuters in person or by phone after fleeing to the North Darfur town of Tawila or to eastern Chad. They described 23 separate incidents in which at least 56 children aged between two months and 17 years were abducted in attacks dating back to 2023.
Six described their own relatives being taken.
Reuters could not determine how many children in total have been abducted, and could not independently verify the witness accounts or trace what happened to the children after they were taken.
The RSF did not respond to requests for comment about the reported abductions and abuse of minors and killing of their parents. Previously it has denied deliberately targeting civilians and says it has placed fighters suspected of abuses under investigation.
Three legal experts said the abductions may constitute unlawful imprisonment and torture, and amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The accounts gathered by Reuters may also constitute acts of enslavement and slave trading that violate international laws and multiple international treaties, said one of the experts, Patricia Sellers, an international lawyer and former special adviser for slavery crimes at the International Criminal Court.
CITY BESIEGED
Sheldon Yett, head of U.N. children’s agency UNICEF in Sudan, said he had not received any reports of children being kidnapped specifically to be used as slaves or to tend to livestock, but said the accounts gathered by Reuters “are sadly consistent with the broader pattern of grave violations we continue to see against children”. He did not elaborate.
The RSF evolved from the so-called Janjaweed militias that fought alongside government forces under the rule of former Sudanese leader Omar al-Bashir and were accused of genocide in Darfur in the early 2000s. During that conflict, the Janjaweed abducted children and forced them to do domestic work, look after livestock, or work as sex slaves, according to reports at the time by activists and human rights groups.
Asked for comment on the witness accounts of abductions during the current war, the Sudanese army said such acts were “consistent with those of the Janjaweed militia during the previous regime.”
Sudan’s army-backed government “cannot accept leaving citizens hostage to the militias’ violence,” it said in a statement to Reuters.
The RSF has previously denied responsibility for atrocities blamed on its fighters in Darfur.
The war has killed tens of thousands of people and led to famine and disease, in what the United Nations has called the world’s largest humanitarian crisis. The RSF and its allies have been blamed for mass killings against ethnic non-Arabs.
In late October the RSF consolidated its grip over Darfur when it took al-Fashir, a city that had sheltered many displaced people and which the paramilitary force had attacked and besieged for 18 months. Witnesses accused it of abuses including summary killings.
During a briefing at the U.N. Security Council on January 20, deputy ICC prosecutor Nazhat Shameem Khan said her office was investigating alleged crimes committed by the RSF in al-Fashir, with a particular focus on violence against women, girls, and children.
Khan said that based on the evidence collected so far, her office believes war crimes and crimes against humanity occurred in the city in late October during the culmination of the RSF’s siege of al-Fashir.
The RSF did not respond to a request for comment on Khan’s assertion.
MOTHERS KILLED, CHILDREN SEIZED
In most cases, the witnesses described RSF fighters taking children whose parents had recently been killed, at gunpoint or after beating the children.
In some cases, six witnesses said, the children had seen their parents being killed.
Ten witnesses interviewed by Reuters in Chad described RSF fighters abducting children during the takeover of al-Fashir.
Abductions took place in the city and along the road to Tawila, a town about 50 km (31 miles) to the west where the U.N. estimates approximately 665,000 displaced people are sheltering, the witnesses said.
Madina Adam Khamis, 38, said she was held captive at al-Fashir University with other women and children after they tried to flee the city on October 26.
At the university she said she watched an RSF fighter known as Abu Lulu shoot many of the captives, including a woman seven months pregnant, and 10 children.
She said Abu Lulu and his group of fighters took three girls and two boys aged between two and five years old, whose mothers they had killed, and put them in the back of a Toyota Land Cruiser. Another fighter took a 2-month-old baby from the arms of one of the girls and sat in the vehicle with the baby as well, she said. She said the children were from al-Fashir, but did not know their names.
“There was one child who lost her mother, the mother died in front of our eyes, and the child was touching her mother to try to get her to wake up,” Khamis said.
Reuters could not independently corroborate Khamis’ account.
ABDUCTED TO LOOK AFTER LIVESTOCK
The RSF told Reuters in December that Abu Lulu was in its custody and it was investigating him and several other RSF soldiers regarding abuses committed in the aftermath of the takeover of al-Fashir.
In the wake of the RSF seizing the city, videos online showing Abu Lulu shooting dead unarmed captives, some of which have been verified by Reuters, gained global attention.
The RSF did not respond to a Reuters request to speak to Abu Lulu.
Mohammed Adam Bashir, 38, said he saw RSF fighters take two boys of around four to five years old and a girl of about three years old, after shooting their mothers dead, as he was fleeing north from al-Fashir to Torro village on October 26. He said the fighters put the children in the back seat of an armoured Land Cruiser.
“They pulled the children away from their two mothers who were dying,” he said. “They took them to the car and then they came back to ask us for money.”
None of the witnesses interviewed by Reuters saw what happened after children were taken. One, Abdulmajeed Abdulkarim, 28, said he heard children crying for their parents at night while he was being held captive in a bush area close to the village of Garney in the days after al-Fashir fell.
Researchers who have interviewed people displaced by the violence in Darfur collected similar testimonies.
A report last month by Amnesty International documented the account of one child who said he was abducted by RSF fighters in Zamzam displacement camp close to al-Fashir, and forced to work.
He said he was chained at night and forced to herd sheep by day for more than six weeks.
His captor called his relatives to demand a ransom of five million Sudanese pounds ($1,500). After they paid, he was released, Amnesty said.
Reuters, which didn’t independently verify Amnesty’s findings, has previously reported that the RSF has held large groups of adult survivors from al-Fashir for ransom. An RSF adviser said at the time that rivals disguised in RSF uniforms were responsible for most such cases.
BROTHERS TAKEN IN RAID
Seven witnesses who spoke to Reuters said fighters referred to the children they took as “falungiat”, or children of falungi, a term that roughly translates to house slaves and is used as a derogatory term for allies of the Sudanese army.
The witnesses, who were mainly from the Zaghawa tribe, said fighters from the RSF’s Arab-dominated force addressed them with racial slurs. The RSF did not respond to a question about possible racial motivations for the abductions.
Several of the witnesses described the RSF taking children alongside seized livestock. Four said RSF fighters told them the children would be used to look after animals – a role commonly assigned to children in the region.
Sixteen witnesses described abductions that took place before the takeover of al-Fashir.
Imam Ali, 26, said he fled besieged al-Fashir in March 2025 with his family and was attacked southeast of Tawila by RSF fighters who arrived with camels, motorcycles, and a car. The fighters shot two of his brothers and abducted the other two, aged 15 and 13, along with 60 of their sheep, he said. He hasn’t heard from the kidnapped brothers since.
Fatima Yahya, 47, said she left Nyala, the capital of South Darfur, in October 2023, and was stopped by a group of RSF fighters in a village called Karamaje, as she fled to al-Fashir with other families.
There the fighters blindfolded two boys and one girl of about nine years old and put the children in the middle seats of three double-cabin Land Cruisers, with two fighters on either side, she said. She said she did not know the children but that they were from Nyala, and two had lost their mothers in bombardments there.
“They told us the kids would look after the animals,” Yahya said.
(Additional reporting by Nafisa Eltahir, Stephanie Van Den Berg and Emma Farge; Editing by Janet Roberts, Sarah Cahlan and Aidan Lewis)
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