The collapse occurred in the village of Tarasin, where many displaced people fleeing the Darfur civil war had taken shelter.

A landslide has swept through a village in Darfur, in western Sudan, causing over a thousand deaths. The collapse occurred in the Marra Mountains following heavy rainfall over recent days, and the village of Tarasin was struck, where the entire population perished except for a single survivor.

The area had become a refuge for some of the millions of people displaced by the civil war that has been crippling the Darfur region for years. Fighting today pits the Sudanese army against the paramilitary group Rapid Support Forces (RSF), while the area where the landslide occurred is controlled by the rebels of the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM).

The village of Tarasin, located in the heart of the Marra Mountains in Darfur, was wiped out by a landslide after days of intense rainfall. According to a statement from the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM), more than a thousand people died and only one survivor was found among the rubble.

The landslide completely razed the settlement to the ground, currently preventing any rescue operations in an area that is unreachable for outside aid, also due to the ongoing armed conflict between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militias. Local authorities, led by Minni Minnawi, described an unprecedented "humanitarian tragedy" and issued an urgent appeal to the UN and international organisations to intervene to recover the bodies and provide support to the affected population.

Darfur is a region of western Sudan bordering Libya, Chad, the Central African Republic, and South Sudan. Its name has been associated with a long history, dating back to the early 2000s, of ethnically motivated attacks that led to the genocide of the local population.

The conflict erupted in 2003, when the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) attacked Sudanese military forces, sparking a civil war. On one side, the attacks by armed opposition groups; on the other, the violence of Sudanese government forces against fighters but also against civilian populations, through the use of chemical weapons and the destruction of entire villages. In 2023, a new phase of the civil war began, pitting the Sudanese armed forces against the paramilitary group Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

According to UN data, the conflict has over time caused the displacement of at least 12 million people out of a population of 50 million, and approximately 150,000 deaths. Some of those displaced had moved to the very area of the Marra Mountains where the landslide occurred.