Collapse in Tarasin Buries Nearly 200 Children as Rescue Efforts Continue
Sudan Events – Agencies
A leading relief organization said Friday that a deadly landslide in Sudan’s western Darfur region over the weekend claimed the lives of up to 200 children, as rescue operations continued in the area.
More than 1,000 people, many buried beneath the mud, are believed to have perished in the devastating August 31 landslide. Save the Children reported that 150 survivors, including 40 children, were receiving medical treatment.
“This is a tragedy within the wider tragedy of Sudan’s ongoing conflict. It is among the worst natural disasters to strike the country,” said Francesco Lanino, Save the Children’s operations director in Sudan, in comments to The Associated Press on Friday.
Sudan is already gripped by one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, driven by the civil war that erupted in the capital Khartoum in April 2023. The conflict has since spread nationwide amid escalating clashes between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. More than 40,000 people have been killed, with as many as 12 million displaced.
On Thursday, Sudanese authorities recovered the bodies of 375 people killed in the August 31 landslide, triggered by days of heavy rainfall in Tarasin, a village in the Jebel Marra mountains.
Mohamed Abdelrahman Al-Naier, spokesperson for the Sudan Liberation Army, said as many as 1,000 people may have died. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs offered similar estimates but stressed that the true scale of the disaster remains difficult to confirm due to the area’s inaccessibility.
“Imagine a village where all the schools and health facilities are buried under mud, with half of the mountain collapsing onto the community — nothing of its infrastructure remains,” Lanino said.
According to him, his team reached Tarasin and surrounding areas on Friday, having set out Thursday morning on donkeys due to the rugged terrain and destroyed roads in rain-stricken Darfur. The village remains cut off from phone networks and any means of communication with the outside world.
Lanino described the scene as shocking: nearly half the mountain had collapsed into the valley, engulfing the village. Survivors told his team that the landslide came in at least two waves, with the first occurring Sunday afternoon. Hours later, a second wave struck nearby villages, hitting those who had rushed to aid victims of the initial collapse.
Thousands are still unaccounted for, Lanino estimated, as it remains unclear how many people are still trapped under the mud. Survivors identified by Save the Children are now receiving medical and protective support.
Residents and local authorities fear further landslides as heavy rainfall continues.
“People living near Tarasin say it is still raining, and we can hear the mountains cracking. They are deeply afraid of more landslides,” Lanino said.
This has forced villagers to flee to nearby communities about five kilometers (three miles) from the disaster zone. But they continue to suffer shortages of food, clean water, medical supplies, shelter, and safe passage to more secure areas away from the mountain slopes.
Save the Children and other aid organizations are providing relief to affected families and working to move them to safer locations using camels and donkeys.
