In the remote mountains of Sudan’s western Darfur, the tiny village of Tarasin was all but erased in a matter of seconds when three deadly landslides struck without warning last week. What was once a community bustling with families, livestock, and daily routines is now buried beneath a suffocating tide of mud and debris, leaving behind only heartbreak and uncertainty.
The disaster began on Sunday, August 31, 2025, at 5 pm local time, when torrential rains—typical of Sudan’s peak flooding season—saturated the slopes above Tarasin. Suddenly, the mountainside gave way. Homes, livestock, and entire families were swallowed whole. According to Save the Children, rescue teams arriving days later could scarcely believe the devastation. “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,” Francesco Lanino, the group’s operations director, told AFP from Port Sudan.
As of September 6, 2025, local authorities and Save the Children confirmed 373 bodies had been recovered, many of them children. But the real toll is likely much higher, with more than 1,000 people feared dead. “1,000 lives may have been lost, including an estimated 200 children,” Lanino told the Associated Press, echoing the grim estimates of the Sudan Liberation Movement Army and the United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Only 150 survivors, including 40 children, have been found so far from Tarasin and its surrounding villages.
The scale of the tragedy is almost impossible to comprehend. “Think about a village with all its existing schools and health facilities totally under the mud, and half of the mountain collapsed all over the village which is fully covered so there is nothing left of the existing structure,” Lanino said. Satellite imagery reviewed by BBC Verify confirmed the destruction: nine buildings and structures, visible in March 2025, had vanished by September, their locations marked only by the muddy scars left behind.
Rescue and recovery efforts have been painfully slow and fraught with danger. With no tools or machinery, survivors have been forced to dig through the mud with their bare hands, desperately searching for loved ones. “People are excavating by hand to rescue the bodies of their relatives since there are no tools or machinery,” Lanino explained to the BBC. The lack of resources has meant that, in the worst-hit village of the Tarseen area—made up of five villages—only one known survivor was found.
The landslides did not come in a single wave. The first struck Tarasin on Sunday, engulfing the village at the base of the mountain. Two more followed on Monday and Tuesday, one sweeping through a nearby valley, the other crashing down on residents who were trying to recover bodies from the initial disaster. “People living by Tarasin they’re saying it’s still raining, that ‘we can somehow hear the sound of the mountains cracking’ and they are really worried that more landslides might come,” Lanino told the Associated Press. Fears of further catastrophe have prompted some survivors to move to nearby villages about five kilometers away, but even there, they lack food, clean water, medical supplies, and shelter.
Jebel Marra, the region where Tarasin lies, is not only subject to heavy rains but is also one of Sudan’s most geologically active areas, 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 wiped out around 5,000 livestock—including cows, goats, and camels—leaving families without food or income.
Accessing the disaster zone has been an ordeal unto itself. Save the Children deployed 11 staff members, including doctors, nurses, midwives, and social workers. Their journey took more than ten hours on donkeyback from the remote town of Golo, traversing 22 kilometers of rocky, muddy terrain with no roads and under heavy rain. The area is so isolated that it lacks any cellular phone network or other means of communication with the outside world.
Once on the ground, the aid workers set up an emergency health post and psychosocial support groups for women and children. But the challenges remain immense. Flooding has contaminated water sources, increasing the risk of cholera—a disease already present in the region. “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,” Lanino warned.
Urgent requests from survivors have included food, blankets, and shelter. Many have nowhere to go, as heavy rains have impacted all surrounding areas, making it difficult to find a safe haven. “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,” Lanino said. Aid groups are delivering supplies and helping facilitate relocation to safer areas by camel and donkey, but resources are stretched thin.
The tragedy in Tarasin is unfolding against a backdrop of even larger catastrophe. Since April 2023, Sudan has been gripped by a brutal civil war between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. The fighting has killed tens of thousands—estimates range from 40,000 to 150,000—and displaced as many as 12 million people, according to the United Nations and U.S. officials. The war has triggered one of the worst humanitarian crises in recent history, with famine and disease stalking the land.
The Jebel Marra region, where the landslides struck, is controlled by the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army, led by Abdulwahid al-Nur—a rebel group that has largely remained uninvolved in the broader conflict. This isolation, while sparing the area from some of the war’s violence, has also made it difficult for humanitarian organizations to reach those in need.
Independent verification of the full impact of the landslide is difficult due to the remoteness of the region and the ongoing conflict. Still, the stories and images emerging from Tarasin paint a picture of “destruction and devastation,” as Save the Children staff described it. “This is a tragedy (within) a tragedy that is the current conflict in Sudan. This is one of the worst natural disasters that has happened in Sudan,” Lanino told the Associated Press.
As rescue and recovery efforts continue, the people of Tarasin and neighboring villages face an uncertain future. With the rainy season far from over and the threat of further landslides looming, their struggle for survival is far from finished. The world’s attention may be fleeting, but for those left behind in the mud, the pain and tears linger on.