For the thousands of families fleeing Sudan’s brutal war, the remote Jebel Marra mountains of Darfur had become a rare place of safety. That fragile sense of security collapsed on 1 September when torrential rains triggered landslides that buried villages and entire families alive. Tarasin, a small village in Jebel Marra, the worst of 88 communities affected, was almost entirely wiped out, with more than 1,000 people reportedly killed.
The landslides have compounded an already dire humanitarian crisis, Mohamed Alnaier, spokesperson of the Sudan Liberation Movement-Army (SLM-AW), a rebel group that controls Jebel Marra, told New Internationalist. ‘Before [the war began] there were more than two million displaced people in our controlled areas,’ he explained. ‘After the war, the figure rose to around seven million with locals included.’
