- Whole town buried in Jebel Marra.
- Only one survivor left the disaster.
- SLM appeals for urgent UN assistance.
Jartoum: A mass landslide in the western region of Darfur in Sudan has flattened a whole mountain town and killed more than 1,000 people, said a rebel group, leaving only a survivor.
The disaster hit Sunday after days of heavy rains, devastating the village of Tarasin in the area of Jebel Marra, the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) said in a statement, led by Abdulwahid al-Nur, in a statement.
“The initial information indicates the death of all residents of the village, estimated at more than 1,000 people, with only one survivor,” said the group, qualifying the “massive and devastating land sliding.”
The group appealed to the United Nations and other help organizations to help recover the dead still buried under mud and rubble.
Images that the SLM published on social networks seemed to show huge sections of the collapsed mountain, burying the town with a thick mud, uprooted trees and shattered beams.
Sudan is wrapped in a bloody war between the army and the paramilitary rapid support forces (RSF), which has plunged the country into one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world.
The SLM controls parts of the Jebel Marra range and has remained mostly outside the conflict, but hundreds of thousands of people have fled to the territory controlled by SLM to escape violence.
Jebel Marra is a resistant volcanic range that extends about 160 kilometers (100 miles) to the southwest of the capital of El-Fasher of North Darfur, which the RSF is pressing to capture after besieging it for more than a year.
The area is prone to landslides, particularly during the rainy season that reaches its maximum point in August. A landslide in 2018 in the nearby Toukoli killed at least 20 people.
‘Tragedy’
Darfur’s aligned governor, Minni Minnaawi, described the landslide as “humanitarian tragedy that goes beyond the borders of the region.”
“We appeal for international humanitarian organizations to intervene urgently and provide support and assistance at this critical moment, since the tragedy is greater than our people can bear alone,” he said in a statement.
Much of Darfur, including the area where landslide occurred, remains largely inaccessible for international aid organizations due to continuous fighting, severely limiting the delivery of urgent humanitarian assistance.
The disaster also occurs during the rainy season of Sudan, which often causes mountain roads and remote areas.
The relentless rain further complicates the efforts of humanitarian organizations to access those in need, particularly in regions affected by conflicts such as Darfur, where infrastructure is already fragile or non -existent.
Since April 2023, Sudan has been devastated by a war that exploded with a power struggle between the head of the Army, Abdel Fattaah Al-Burhan, and his former deputy, the RSF Commander Mohamed Hamdan Daglo.
In a series of offensives, Burhan’s forces recovered the center of Sudan this year, leaving the RSF with control over the majority of Darfur, where he has conquered all state capital, El-Fafasher, and parts of southern Kordofan.
The fight has killed tens of thousands and displaced millions, including about four million from the capital alone.
The war has decimated the infrastructure of the country of Northeast of Africa and has created what the UN describes as the largest displacement and hunger crises in the world.
Around 10 million people within Sudan move, while some additional four million have fled to neighboring countries, according to the UN.
