CNN correspondent Clarissa Ward revealed that she and her team were held captive by a militia for two days while reporting in Darfur earlier this month.
The 44-year-old veteran war correspondent traveled to Sudan to report on the civil war, which has sparked a humanitarian crisis with more than 26 million people facing starvation.
In an essay she wrote for CNN, Ward said she and her team were arrested by a militia led by a man who goes by the name “The General” just hours after arriving in North Darfur.
Ward, cameraman Scott McWhinne and producer Brent Swails were inside a vehicle when they were surrounded by armed fighters, who angrily told them not to film on the scene.
Ward’s producer tried to defuse the situation, but the general grabbed a rifle and fired a bullet — apparently at a bird.
“I was relieved the gun wasn’t pointed at us, but still disturbed by his erratic behavior,” Ward wrote of the terrifying experience.
The journalist said she was invited to the town of Tawila by a faction of the Sudan Liberation Movement, which is a neutral side in the civil war.
When she and her team arrived at the agreed meeting point in the town of Abu Gamra, they were met by a rival militia and two trucks carrying rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns.
The team driver was taken in chains to the city jail and the crew were interrogated individually for three hours in a “tiny windowless room”.
After questioning, Ward and her team were herded into their vehicle and ordered to follow a convoy that was headed deeper into Darfur.
Ward wrote that as the general fired his gun again and shouted at the crew, she pleaded with him, saying: ‘I am a mother. I have three little boys.”
Ward said a security chief told them not to panic and asked the CNN crew for their loved ones’ phone numbers so he could reassure them they were OK.
The militia then called the crew’s relatives and told them they were safe, while threatening that they could be held for years if they told anyone about the situation.
The crew was then held for two days under the watch of armed men, some as young as 14, Ward wrote.
After 48 hours, the general informed the CNN crew that they would be released, with the general saying, “We thought you were a spy, but now you can go home.”
“A wave of relief crashed through my body,” Ward said. “There were smiles and handshakes with our captors. We awkwardly posed for a picture on the edge of the carpet that had been our makeshift prison.”
Fighting between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Force broke out in April 2023 in the capital, Khartoum, and has since spread across the country. Darfur has experienced particularly intense fighting.
The UN estimates that around 20,000 people have been killed and thousands injured since the conflict began.
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