A landslide in western Sudan’s Marra mountains on Sunday has totally erased the village of Tarsin.
Reliable information about the death toll is scarce, with people in the area putting it anywhere between scores killed to around 1,000 people.
As per the Middle East Eye, residents of the region said weeks of heavy rains on the range, which traverses three governorates in Darfur, culminated in the disaster. They added that landslides are continuing, complicating rescue efforts and endangering other villages near Tarsin, which sits near a mountain summit more than 3,000 metres above sea level.
The Ummro district, where Tarsin is located, has been held for two decades by the Sudan People’s Liberation movement/Abdul Wahid faction (SLM/AW), a rebel group that says it is neutral in the Sudan civil war.
International aid organisations have struggled for access to areas in Sudan even before this disaster, and now face rugged terrain, inaccessible routes and the danger of further landslides to reach Tarsin, let alone the conflict and chaos they already faced.
Adam Rigal, a support worker for displaced Sudanese in the area, reportedly said that Tarsin’s entire population of over 1,000 people was killed, with just one person surviving as he happened to be out of the village at the time.
“Hundreds of people are still under the ruins and people are only using local tools to retrieve the dead bodies with great difficulty,” Rigal said. “The situation is really deteriorating, and the people are in bad need of emergency and humanitarian assistance in terms of retrieving the dead bodies and evacuation of the near villages.”
Aid workers in Darfur reportedly said that the situation is especially disastrous because the war has made the area inaccessible. “This natural disaster comes when the humanitarian situation is already dire because of war and hunger,” an aid worker in Central Darfur told MEE, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“So now is the moment for humanity to move together to save those victims of war and natural disasters.”
With landslides continuing in the surrounding area, residents of nearby villages have started to flee.
However, they have no secure location to head towards, or transportation methods other than walking or donkeys.
