- Whole village buried in Jebel Marra.
- A single survivor withdrew from the disaster.
- SLM calls for assistance from the United Nations.
Khartoum: A massive landslide in the Western Darfur region of Sudan has flattened a whole mountain village and killed more than 1,000 people, said a rebellious group, leaving only one survivor.
The disaster struck Sunday after days of heavy rains, devastating the village of Tarasin in the region of Jebel Marra, the Sudan / Army Liberation Movement (SLM), led by Abdulwahid al-Nur, in a press release.
“The initial information indicates the death of all residents of the village, estimated at more than 1,000 people, with a single survivor,” said the group, calling the “massive and devastating” landslide.
The group called on the United Nations and the other help organizations to get help to recover the dead still buried under the mud and the debris.
Images that the SLM published on social networks seemed to show huge sections of the mountain collapsed, buried the village under a thick mud, uprooted trees and broken beams.
Sudan is involved in a bloody war between the army and the paramilitary rapid support forces (RSF), which plunged the country into one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world.
The SLM controls the parts of the Jebel Marra channel and mainly stayed outside the conflict, but hundreds of thousands of people fled in a territory held by SLM to escape violence.
Jebel Marra is an damaged volcanic range which extends about 160 kilometers (100 miles) to the southwest of the besieged capital of the North Darfur, which the RSF pushes to capture after having besieged it for more than a year.
The area is prone to landslides, especially during the rainy season that peaks in August. A 2018 landslide in Toukoli nearby killed at least 20 people.
‘Tragedy’
The governor aligned by the Army of Darfur, Minni Minnawi, described the landslide “humanitarian tragedy which goes beyond the borders of the region”.
“We call on international humanitarian organizations to intervene urgently and provide support and assistance at this critical moment, because tragedy is greater than what our people can bear alone,” he said in a statement.
A large part of the Darfur – including the region where the landslide has occurred – remains largely inaccessible to international aid organizations due to current fights, seriously limiting the delivery of urgent humanitarian assistance.
The disaster also occurs during the Sudan rainy season, which often makes mountain roads and distant areas impracticable.
Incessant precipitation further complicates the efforts of humanitarian organizations to access those who need it, especially in regions affected by conflicts such as Darfur, where infrastructure is already fragile or non -existent.
Since April 2023, Sudan has been ravaged by a war that broke out with a power struggle between the head of the army Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his former deputy, the commander of the RSF, Mohamed Hamdan Daglo.
In a series of offensives, the forces of Burhan found the Central Sudan this year, leaving the RSF with the control of most of the Darfur – where it conquered the whole capital of the State, El -Fasher – and the parts of the southern Kordofan.
The fighting killed tens of thousands and moved millions, including about four million in the capital alone.
The war has decimated the infrastructure of the country of North East Africa and has created what the UN describes as the biggest crises of travel and hunger in the world.
About 10 million people are currently moved to Sudan, while an additional four million have fled to neighboring countries, according to the UN.
