KEY POINTS
- Over 61,000 people died in Khartoum during the war.
- Starvation and disease surpassed violent deaths as main causes.
- Families bury loved ones at home as cemeteries fill.
An estimated 61,000 people died in Khartoum state during the first 14 months of Sudan’s war, according to a report by researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine’s Sudan Research Group. Of these, about 26,000 were violent deaths, surpassing U.N. figures for the entire country. The report, released Wednesday as a preprint, highlights starvation and disease as growing causes of death.
Deaths in Khartoum soar, outpacing earlier estimates
Researchers found that deaths in Khartoum occurred at a rate 50% higher than Sudan’s prewar national average. The war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, which began in April 2023, has displaced 11 million people and driven half the population into aid dependency, according to the U.N.
Death registration in Sudan is poor, and ongoing conflict has cut access to hospitals, morgues, and cemeteries. Using a “capture-recapture” sampling technique, researchers compiled three lists of the dead: a public survey circulated on social media, private surveys distributed through community networks, and obituaries posted online. These lists captured just 5% of the estimated deaths in Khartoum and 7% of violent deaths.
“Our findings suggest that deaths have largely gone undetected,” said lead author Maysoon Dahab.
The study estimates violent deaths in Khartoum exceeded the 20,178 fatalities recorded nationwide during the same period by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data project (ACLED), a U.S.-based crisis monitoring group.
Burials rise as conflict disrupts healthcare and aid
Reuters stated that while airstrikes and shelling have devastated Khartoum, hunger, disease, and collapsing healthcare have significantly worsened the toll. Hospitals are overwhelmed with cases of malnutrition, malaria, cholera, and dengue fever.
“Malnutrition leads to weak immunity, which has caused many deaths, especially among pregnant women and children,” said Hadeel Malek, manager of Bahri’s al-Shuhada hospital.
According to reuters, residents report burying victims in makeshift graves near homes. Undertakers in Omdurman say the city’s main cemetery has expanded into a nearby football field as burial rates reach 50 bodies a day.
Army spokesman Brig. Gen. Nabil Abdallah blamed the conflict’s toll on the Rapid Support Forces, while the RSF accused the army of targeting civilians with airstrikes.
The war, which began as a power struggle between the two factions, has displaced millions and triggered ethnically driven violence in Darfur, where the RSF has been accused of atrocities.
The study, funded by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.K. Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, underscores the scale of suffering, noting that indirect impacts like hunger and disease are escalating.
