CNNs Clarissa Ward and team were held captive by militia in Darfur for two days, captors thought they were spies

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 ignited a humanitarian crisis with more than 26 million people facing famine.In an essay she penned for CNN, Ward said she and her team were detained by a militia led by a man who went by the moniker “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 off a round– apparently targeting a bird.“I was relieved that the gun wasn’t pointed at us but still disturbed by his erratic behavior,” Ward wrote of the scary experience.The journalist said she had been invited to the town of Tawila by a faction of the Sudan Liberation Movement, which is a neutral party in the civil war.When she and her team reached the agreed meeting point in the town of Aby Gamra, they were met by a rival militia and two trucks carrying rocket propelled grenades and machine guns.The team’s driver was hauled off in chains to the town jail and the crew was interrogated individually for three hours in a “small, windowless room.”After the questioning, Ward and her team were put in their vehicle and ordered to follow a convoy that was headed deeper into Darfur.Ward wrote that as the general shot his weapon 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 be frightened and asked the  CNN team for their loved ones’ phone numbers so he could assure them they were okay.The militia then called the crew’s relatives and said they were safe, while threatening they could be held for ...