CAIRO: In the remote mountain village of Tarasin in Sudan’s western Darfur, three successive landslides struck without warning last week.
“The people lost everything,” Francesco Lanino, operations director at Save the Children, said after a team from the charity arrived in the devastated village in Sudan’s Jebel Marra region.
Torrential rains had saturated the mountains above and when the hillside finally gave way, it collapsed in seconds — burying homes, livestock and entire families under a tide of mud.
“When our team arrived in the village, of course it was hard for them to imagine that under the mud there was an entire village and there were hundreds of bodies,” said Lanino.
The latest figures from local authorities and Save the Children put the death toll at 373 confirmed bodies recovered, many of them children.
But the true figure is believed to be far higher, with more than 1,000 people feared dead.
Only 150 survivors, including 40 children, have been found from Tarasin and surrounding villages so far, according to Save the Children.
“There’s a lot of pain and tears,” said Lanino. “They’ve lost many of their relatives, many children. And of course they don’t know ... how to rescue them or try to recover the bodies.”
With no tools or machinery available, survivors were forced to dig through the mud with their bare hands, desperately searching for lost loved ones, Lanino said.
“The survivors were left with no home, no food, no livestock, nothing,” he said.
“They don’t know where to go because all the areas are somehow impacted by the heavy rains. They don’t really know which is a safe
place to go.”
Over the course of three days, Tarasin and neighboring communities were struck by three separate landslides.
The first, on Sunday, swept through Tarasin in seconds, engulfing the entire village at the base of the mountain.
Two more followed on Monday and Tuesday, with one hitting a nearby valley and the other crashing down on residents who were trying to recover bodies from the initial disaster.
“There are a lot of people that are still scared that a new landslide might come ... They heard some cracks coming from the mountains.”
As well as experiencing heavy rain, Jebel Marra is one of Sudan’s most geologically active regions, sitting atop a major tectonic fault line. The General Authority for Geological Research has warned that continued landslides could lead to “catastrophic” humanitarian and environmental consequences.
The mudslides also wiped out around 5,000 livestock — including cows, goats and camels — leaving families without food or income.
Save the Children has deployed 11 staff, including doctors, nurses, midwives and social workers to the village.
After traveling for 10 gruelling hours on donkey back from the remote town of Golo across rugged terrain with no roads and under heavy rain, the team arrived on Thursday.
The NGO has set up an emergency health post, along with psychosocial support groups for women and children.
But the challenges remain immense. With flooding contaminating water sources, cholera is now a major threat.
“There was already some cholera cases in the area. So we are also very worried there could be a new and huge outbreak of cholera among the survivors but also in all the areas nearby.”
Urgent requests from survivors included food, blankets and shelter.
The landslides struck during Sudan’s peak flooding season, which runs from July to October, and amid a war that has triggered one of the worst humanitarian crises in recent history, according to the UN.
More than two years of fighting between rival generals has killed tens of thousands, displaced millions and left some areas suffering from famine and cholera.
The Jebel Marra region, which has no mobile phone network or road access, is controlled by the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army, led by Abdulwahid Al-Nur — a rebel group that has largely remained uninvolved in the fighting.
