Nairobi, November 15 — During the first 14 months of the Sudan conflict there were more violent deaths in Khartoum state alone than the current number of deaths recorded for the entire country, a new study suggests.
A report released on Wednesday by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine said that between April 2023 and June 2024 over 61,000 died in Khartoum. Over 90% of deaths in Khartoum went unrecorded, suggesting the death toll in other regions is also significantly higher than the current recorded figures. They suggest the need for a scaled-up humanitarian response, the authors said.
The report also found that in that period the leading cause of death was preventable disease and starvation. Deaths due to violence were highest in the Kordofan and Darfur regions.
“Our findings reveal the severe and largely invisible impact of the war on Sudanese lives, especially of preventable disease and starvation,” said Dr Maysoon Dahab, lead author at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. “The overwhelming level of killings in Kordofan and Darfur indicate wars within a war.”
The study was conducted through a survey disseminated on public social media and private informant networks and public social media obituaries.