Bodies pile up without burials, marooned by a relentless conflict

KHARTOUM, Sudan (AP):

It was a funeral no one had envisaged; Sadig Abbas’ lifeless body was lowered hastily into a shallow unmarked grave in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, not long after dawn.

Even the few family members and neighbours who could attend were distracted, scouring the cemetery’s surroundings for warnings of incoming fire, recounted Awad el-Zubeer, a neighbour of the deceased.

Thankfully, none came.

Nearly four months of violent street battles between the Sudanese Army and the paramilitary known as the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have made funerals a near impossibility in Khartoum. Amid the chaos, residents and local medical groups say corpses lie rotting in the capital’s streets, marooned by a conflict that shows few signs of easing.

Sudan fighting is driving country to collapse and millions face a ‘humanitarian calamity’, the UN says.

“Given these circumstances, if you asked me exactly where his body was buried I couldn’t tell you,” said el-Zubeer.

There is limited data on the casualties in Sudan. The country’s health minister, Haitham Mohammed Ibrahim, said in June that the conflict has killed upward of 3,000 people but there has been no update since. The true tally is likely far higher, say local doctors and activists.

Likewise, no medical group has provided a toll on the number of unburied corpses, with mass graves and widespread ethnic killings being uncovered in the country’s southern Darfur region.

Most civilians from the capital have been killed in crossfire, as the once sleepy city turned into an urban battlefield, the country’s doctors union said. Others died because they were unable to access basic medicine, while some reportedly starved to death, imprisoned by the gun battles that raged outside.

In times of peace, their funerals would have been large affairs lasting days. In Sudan, it is common for thousands to pay respects to the deceased. In accordance with Sudanese Islamic tradition, corpses are usually washed and blessed before being buried in cemetery graves dug by family members.

Seven former and current residents from the capital area told The Associated Press that the conflict between the country’s two top generals, army head General Abdel Fattah Burhan and RSF commander Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, has shattered this tradition. Three of those who spoke did so on condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisal.

Several said reaching any of the capital’s roughly two dozen cemeteries has proved impossible when they were trying to bury family members, friends, or those with whom they were trapped.

Over 100 university students were caught in Khartoum University when the conflict broke out on April 15. Khaled, a student, was shot in the chest by a stray bullet, dying shortly after being hit, a fellow student said.

“We dragged his dead body to the lower levels (of a building) to stop it rotting,” he said, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of being targetted.

He and others then wrapped Khaled’s remains in a makeshift Islamic burial cloth and buried him in the university grounds beneath a tree after gaining approval from his family.

Gasin Amin Oshi, a resident from the Beit al-Mal area in Omdurman, located just across the Nile river from Khartoum, said a neighbouring family was prevented from burying a loved one in a nearby graveyard by RSF troops. Instead they buried the woman, who died of natural causes, in the grounds of a school.

Most of the residents said RSF troops, who control vast swaths of the city, often cause the disruption. In the first days of the conflict, the army bombed RSF camps in the capital, prompting homeless RSF fighters to commandeer civilian homes and turn them into bases. The army, in turn, struck residential areas from the air and with artillery. Over 2.15 million people have since fled Khartoum state according to UN data.