Sudan conflict: Pregnant woman and baby killed in shooting – but husband left unaware
Men in crisp white thobes sit on mats under a leafy thorn tree carefully cutting pieces of white material.
They slowly stitch them together with tender, experienced precision.
Another shroud for another life lost to senseless violence.
More men arrive and they raise their hands in prayer to grieve the recently deceased.
The latest victim of the militias terrorising their community lies in a two room morgue a few metres away.
Fatma was eight months pregnant and travelling on a cart with her young son and daughter to Hajr Hadeed in eastern Chad.
She left her husband in the violence of al Geneina, the state capital of West Darfur in Sudan, where fleeing residents are reporting a citywide massacre.
Fatma’s sister Zeinab says her five-year-old nephew El-Sheikh was holding his pregnant mother’s body when the cart arrived in the village.
She rushed with close relatives to Adre Central Hospital.
Men stitch together shrouds with tender, experienced precision
They could feel the heaviness of Fatma’s body, but held out hope that the baby in her belly was still alive.
Hospital workers were cleaning the blood from the floor when they arrived at Dr Mahmoud Adam’s office.
He said Fatma was dead when she arrived and was quickly able to ascertain that the baby too had died.
“Since the war in Khartoum started so many wounded civilians are passing through the border from Darfur,” said Dr Mahmoud, whose hospital now has treatment tents operated by the medical aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) in its grounds.
He recalls the 2003 genocide and observes there is little difference between then and now.
“It is so sad that to see people dying and suffering like this,” he said.
The floor shows signs of where Fatma’s blood has just been washed away
We walk over to the morgue where Fatma lies covered on a cement slab.
“She was shot in the back of the head,” he said.
Dr Mahmoud believes she died instantly.
Read more on Sudan crisis:
Scale of destruction in before and after images
The fighting explained
Zeinab sits under a tree just outside the morgue building.
Her eyes are wet and wide and every couple of minutes she muffles her sobs with her dark tobe.
Fatma’s small children lie silently across her lap.
More family arrive from their village as the body is prepared for burial.
The dead woman’s sister, Zeinab, waits outside the morgue with other grieving family members
Zeinab is handed different phones as family from across the region call to extend their condolences.
One call that doesn’t come is from Fatma’s husband Adam in al Geneina where telecommunications have been down for more than a week.
The only information from there is coming from the fleeing residents who have safely made it across the violence-ridden region.
The city ‘is on fire’
They say the city is on fire and that there are too many deaths to count.
Deep in the al Geneina blackout, Adam is still unaware that his wife and unborn child have been killed.
MSF doctors treat the wounded in the hospital’s grounds
No one can reach him to deliver the news.
Fatma emerges from the morgue wrapped in the white shroud.
She’s lifted onto the back of a military grade Toyota pick-up by the men from her family as wailing rings out from the crowd of women.
Dread and panic
The cries carry more than just loss, but notes of dread and panic.
The fearful anticipation that there is more grief to come.
Three people have been taken to hospital after a large chunk of a motorway in Sweden collapsed in a landslide early on Saturday morning.
Police said at least four cars and a bus skidded off the E6 motorway – connecting Gothenburg in Sweden to Norway’s capital Oslo – near the small town of Stenungsund.
Several buildings were also damaged, including a Burger King restaurant.
The landslide has affected a total area of around 700 x 200 metres, which is roughly equivalent of 21 football pitches.
“The hardest hit parts of the landslide area measure around 150 x 100 metres,” the Gothenburg Rescue Services added in a statement.
“A number of people have been helped out of vehicles in the slide area with the help of fire personnel and a helicopter.”
The motorway was badly damaged. Pic: Adam Ihse/TT News Agency via AP
The cause of the landslide is not yet clear. Pic: Adam Ihse/TT News Agency via AP
Rescue services say further landslides cannot be ruled out.
Police say nobody is suspected of a crime, but an investigation has been launched into whether a construction site nearby caused the landslide.
Rescue services were on the scene in the early hours. Pic: Björn Larsson Rosvall/TT News Agency via AP
There has also been heavy rainfall in the area over the past few days.
Swedish news agency TT reported several cars and one truck had fallen into cracks caused by the landslide, while rescue services told public broadcaster SVT all people have been helped out.
Specially trained dogs were on the scene to ensure no people had been overlooked among the debris.
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