An award-winning CNN reporter revealed that she and her crew were captured in Sudan during a terrifying two-day ordeal while covering the humanitarian crisis during the region’s civil war.

Chief International Correspondent Clarissa Ward, 44, explains in an opinion piece for CNN published on Wednesday how she and her crew were detained by a militia just hours after arriving in North Darfur earlier this month.

“We came to Darfur to report on the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, and never intended to be part of the story,” Ward wrote. “But months of planning derailed when we were held by a militia led by the man everyone called the General.”

The Peabody-winning reporter said that as fighters surrounded their vehicle with “guns drawn,” the “general” shouted at the crew not to film.

Scott McWhinnie, the cameraman, and Brent Swails, a producer, tried to reassure the angry leader that they were not filming.

But to their horror, the general took out a gun and fired it at a bird.

“I was relieved that the gun was not pointed at us, but still disturbed by his erratic behavior,” Ward wrote.

While the crew’s driver was taken in handcuffs to a city jail, the crew was interrogated for three hours in a windowless room by eight men who asked questions like, “Why are you here?” “Who sent you here?” “Who gave you permission to be here?”

“We answered their questions but received no information in return: who these men were or what they wanted with us,” Ward wrote.

After the interrogation, they were ordered back into their vehicle and told to follow a convoy ahead. But at one point the general stopped the vehicle, shouted and shot his gun.

‘The purpose is probably to scare us. It worked,” Ward said.

Ward told their captors in Arabic that they were scared and that she was the mother of three boys.

‘The general seemed disinterested, but I saw the security chief’s face soften.

‘Don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid,’ he assured me, ‘we are human beings,’” Ward said.

She said the crew was held for the next two days by the general, the security chief and a dozen militants, some of whom appeared to be as young as 14 years old.

But on the final day of their ordeal, the general and security chief appeared to be in “good spirits.”

He told them they would be released and said, “We thought you were spies, but now you can go home.”

She said she and McWhinnie then posed for a photo-op with the security chief. The photo, which showed Ward standing ‘awkwardly’ in a red scarf and blue shirt, a militant in camouflage and McWhinnie in a black shirt, was taken in their ‘makeshift prison’.

They then headed home and never reached the intended destination of Tawila for their reporting assignment.

“As a journalist you never want to become the story,” Ward said. “And yet our experience is instructive in understanding the complexities of the conflict in Darfur and the challenges of getting food and aid to those who need it most and spreading the story to the world.”