Search teams recovered around 100 bodies from a remote village that is feared to have been wiped out by a devastating landslide over the weekend in Sudan's western region of Darfur, a rebel group said Wednesday.
Mohamed Abdel-Rahman al-Nair, a spokesman for the Sudan Liberation Movement-Army, told The Associated Press the recovery operation took place Tuesday and that search efforts were underway despite a lack of resources and equipment. He also said the death toll from the Aug. 31 landslide in Tarasin, in the Marrah Mountains, could be as high as 1,000.
The United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA, said that the death toll and the full scale of the tragedy have yet to be confirmed as the area hit was “extremely hard to reach.”
The UN has said that “between 300-1,000 people may have lost their lives” in the landslide and that efforts were mobilized to support the impacted area, located more than 900 kilometers (560 miles) west of the capital, Khartoum.
Pope Leo XIV spoke of the tragedy during his weekly address on Wednesday, saying it has left “behind pain and despair.”
He called for “a coordinated response to stop this humanitarian catastrophe,” and initiate a “serious, sincere, and inclusive dialogue between the parties to end the conflict and restore hope, dignity, and peace to the people of Sudan.”
Arjimand Hussain, Regional Response Manager with Plan International, one of the few NGOs operating in Darfur, said the group, along with the UN, plans to send teams to Tarasin in the coming days, but deployment is difficult with the heavy rains making roads inaccessible.
“The whole humanitarian community is feeling helpless at the moment,” he said.
The Marrah Mountains region is a volcanic area with a height of more than 3,000 meters (9,840 feet) at its summit. The mountain chain is a world heritage site and is known for its lower temperature and higher rainfall than its surroundings, according to UNICEF.
A small-scale landslide hit the area in 2018, killing at least 19 people and injuring dozens of others, according to the now-disbanded United Nations-African Union mission in Darfur.
Sunday’s tragedy was the latest to slam Sudan amid its devastating civil war. The country has been hit by famine and disease outbreaks, including cholera, which killed hundreds of people this year.
The war began in April 2023 when boiling tensions between the military and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces exploded into open fighting in Khartoum and elsewhere in the country.
The conflict killed tens of thousands of people and created the world’s largest humanitarian crisis. More than 14 million people have been displaced and parts of the country have slipped into famine.
The war has been marked by atrocities, including mass killings and rape, which the International Criminal Court is investigating as war crimes and crimes against humanity.
