SUDAN:Awatif Ahmed Salih kept her eyes on the ground all afternoon trying not to attract attention just as the older women had told her.
It made no difference.
One of the Sudanese soldiers picked the 16-year-old Darfuri girl from the dozens of women held under armed guard in the town of Deribat.
She was blindfolded, thrown into a pick-up truck and driven two hours to a government camp. There she was raped repeatedly by a man she believes to be a senior officer in the Sudanese army.
"When I realised what was happening I was telling them to kill me," she said quietly in the local language of her Fur tribe. She was kept as a sex slave for three days before a rebel counterattack ended her ordeal.
Human rights monitors believe the government attack on Deribat and eight surrounding villages marks a return to the darkest days of Darfur's conflict. United Nations investigators have concluded that rape is once again being used as a weapon of war, just as it was at the start of the conflict.
Investigators have interviewed girls as young as 13 who were targeted by government soldiers during the attack. Two pregnant women were raped causing them to miscarry.
A group of 14 women were held for a week and raped day after day by up to four men at a time.
José Diaz, spokesman for the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights, said reports of random attacks on women collecting firewood or water were commonplace. "But this was a deliberate attack with rape and sexual assault used as part of the tactic of war," he said.
"It is being used to demoralise and to terrorise a population deemed hostile to the government and, in a very basic, brutal way, to wipe out the enemy."
The attack on Deribat in late December followed a familiar pattern. Government Antonov planes began the assault with an aerial bombardment. Witnesses said 20 4x4s then swept through the town. They were accompanied by Janjaweed fighters riding horses and camels. At least 36 people died, according to locals.
Awatif was in her simple mud brick home as the shooting began. She emerged to see what was happening.
Two men in khaki uniforms grabbed her and marched the young woman to a government office close to the town's market, where dozens more were being held under armed guard.
"There were men coming and going all the time so the idea was to keep your eyes down so that they would not pick you," she said from the safety of Gorolang Baje, a rebel stronghold set amid the hills and fertile valleys of Jebel Mara.
Some women were taken to spend the night at roadblocks or army camps, she said. She remembered being taken to a camouflaged tent where she was raped by a man in the uniform of a government soldier.
The next morning she was driven back to Deribat, only to be picked out again and taken back to the same officer. "We were not treated as women should be. It was as if we were slaves that could be used for their pleasure," she said.
After two nights and three days, an attack by rebels of the Sudan Liberation Army gave them a chance to escape.
The survivors of Deribat are not easy to find.
About 3,000 have made their way to Gorolang Baje, a four- hour donkey ride from the nearest road or aid outpost.
Habiba Mohamed Elhag, the town women's officer, said dozens more women said they had been raped by government soldiers.
"They did it because they want to destroy the kindness and the hearts of the women," she said. "This is the kind of war that we are fighting."
Our meeting takes place in the privacy of an outhouse built from mud bricks and donkey dung. If other villagers knew what had happened to Awatif, she would have little prospect of marriage.
But she insisted her name and photograph be used in the international media.
"I want you to use my true name because I have told you the truth of what happened," she said, fiddling with a tiny passage from the Koran hanging around her neck. "This will be a message to other women over the world to support the women here."