An armed group in Sudan’s Darfur region has reported that a landslide killed over 1,000 people last night, destroying an entire village.
Late on Monday night, the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A) released a statement reporting that a natural disaster had hit the remote Sudanese village.
The landslide reportedly destroyed the entire village of Tarsin in the Marrah Mountains area of Darfur, triggered by heavy rainfall.
According to the SLM/A, the rebel group that controls the region of Western Sudan, only one person has survived the disaster.
The village of Tarasin was “completely levelled to the ground”, the statement added.
The group is calling on the UN to assist in an aid mission aimed at recovering the bodies from under the ground.
In a statement from the regional Governor of Darfur, Minni Arko Minnawi, he described the incident as a “humanitarian tragedy that exceeds the borders of the region”.
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Minnawi said that they are in desperate need of international humanitarian organisations “to intervene urgently and to provide support and assistance at this critical moment, as the tragedy is beyond the capacity of our people.”
The affected area of the landslide is in a very remote corner of the Marrah Mountains, considered as a difficult location to reach via car or other means of transport.
Internally displaced refugees as victims
Due to the ongoing war within Sudan, this regions remote location was often used as a place of refuge and shelter for those wanting to escape conflict zones, Mohamed Vall, Al Jazeera correspondent said.
“Those villages are actually many in number and are crowded with people. Some of them are displaced from other parts of Darfur” he said.
People fleeing clashes between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary group Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in North Darfur state often find themselves seeking shelter in the Marra Mountains.
Reuters reported that these regions are severely short of food and medication.
The role of SLM/A in Sudan’s wider conflict
Sudan has now entered it’s third year of the ongoing war and has been plunged into one of the worlds worst humanitarian crises in recent times. The Darfur region has already been declared to be undergoing a famine.
The SLM/A are a rebel group formed in 2002 by Abdul Wahid al-Nur by various non-Arab ethnicities who felt marginalised by Sudan’s wider politics at the time.
They have been involved in various attacks and conflicts, such as a notable plane hijacking in 2008 and involvement in the Libyan Civil War (2011).
The SLM/A have currently pledged to fight with the Sudanese military against the RSF.
El-Fasher, located in North Darfur has been besieged by the RSF for more than a year, and is the last major territory that the SLM/A are clinging onto.
Just last year, the paramilitary group lost Khartoum, and they are currently still trying to consolidate their power in the west of the country.
This devastating landslide has now added onto the already disastrous humanitarian crisis unfolding in Sudan.
