Sudan: Mass graves in West Darfur’s capital haunt remaining residents
Once the thriving capital of West Darfur, al Geneina is now nearly deserted.
Humanitarian volunteers told Sky News around 70% of the city’s half-a-million residents have fled since the start of the war in Sudan and that the bodies littering the streets are now buried at multiple mass grave sites after a huge clean-up operation.
The coordinates of potential mass grave sites on the outskirts of al Geneina shared by C4ADS, a Washington DC-based global security non-profit, have been verified by Sky News through various eyewitness accounts.
A satellite image from May shows regular mountainous terrain just north of the main artery connecting al Geneina to eastern Chad.
This satellite image taken on 18 May highlights the three locations of suspected mass graves
On 6 July, the same three areas are now visibly water-filled due to seasonal rainfall.
Another satellite image taken seven weeks later shows the same three locations filled with water
An eyewitness independently located this site for Sky News using landmarks on the map and says he watched as decomposing bodies were dumped into a body of water at the end of June.
“It was the start of the rainy season and they had disconnected the network so we had to go to the edges of the city to try and make calls,” he said.
The pitch of his voice climbed with urgency as he described the scene.
“After the police station and over the mountain – around 250 metres from a cattle slaughterhouse – I saw a group of scared residents throwing nine bodies into a large pond.”
Read more: Why did violence erupt in Sudan?
‘I lost 14 brothers and sisters’
One volunteer independently verified the location of this grave site and says he was present as 50 bodies were dumped there.
The next day, he was involved in the transportation of another 45 bodies.
“Our group was not happy with how the dead were being treated so we opted out of the burial. We helped with transporting the corpses but did not join for the dumping,” he says.
He identified the victims as being from the African Massalit and Burgo tribes and says that volunteers could not film or even make a call around the site.
“One guy we know was suspected of leaking information and was beaten until his leg broke.”
From the Burgo tribe himself, his own family has suffered from the extreme ethnic violence that ravaged al Geneina.
He says 14 of his brothers and sisters have been killed in al Geneina since the start of the war in April – many of them remained unburied for weeks after their deaths.
One of his sisters, a teenager, was shot in the head and killed in their home – a horrific incident corroborated by a humanitarian worker also in the city at the time.
“I buried my sister 54 days after she was killed. My mother was wounded at the same time and could not leave the house for a long time. She still hasn’t received any medical assistance,” said the volunteer, who is being kept anonymous for his safety.
He and his family are some of the remaining non-Arab residents in al Geneina.
His elderly father and wounded mother make leaving difficult and relocation funds are low after their savings were looted from their home amid the chaos.
The little income he gets from transporting bodies has helped him facilitate the burial of his family members.
Read more on Sudan:
Bodies of 87 people found in mass grave
Scale of destruction in Sudanese city revealed
‘Assassination attempts’ on volunteers trying to help
A humanitarian worker who has a long history of advocacy work in al Geneina believes that the city has been ethnically cleansed.
“The janjaweed militias practised forced displacement by burning homes and shelters for the displaced in a brutal and racist manner – killing civilians – which is considered a crime of genocide,” he said.
He added the campaign to tidy up the city’s emptied streets is led by Arab tribesmen and is an attempt to clean up the image of the Rapid Support Forces and their aligned militias who have been caught filling up mass graves.
“The Rapid Support Forces, along with Arab militias, participated by providing digging mechanisms such as bulldozers and trucks – in addition to designating burial areas. Sometimes they even participated with volunteers,” the source says.
Another mass grave site is reported on the northern outskirts of the city, along Tendelti road – a border town which was razed to the ground in May.
And even in this moment of relative calm in al Geneina, those told to bury the evidence of violence are facing violence themselves.
“There have been some assassination attempts in al Geneina these days of some of the volunteers who participated in the preparation and burial of bodies in the mass graves,” he says.
“The latest of which is the attempted assassination of the manager of the Sudanese Red Crescent in West Darfur, who was shot with live bullets and is now under medical care in Chad.”
Friedrich Merz, who is set to become the new German chancellor, has vowed to “create unity” in Europe as it adjusts to the new Trump administration and Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Mr Merz’s task will be complicated by the need to form a coalition with the centre-left Social Democrats of outgoing chancellor Olaf Scholz, who will remain in office for the immediate future.
He has repeatedly pledged not to work with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, despite its second-place finish but which is under observation by the country’s intelligence agency for suspected right-wing extremism.
Mr Merz’s conservative Christian Democrats and their Bavarian sister party the Christian Social Union, which won with 28.5% of the votes, and the Social Democrats have a combined 328 seats in the 630-seat parliament.
The 69-year-old, who put toughening Germany’s immigration laws at the forefront of the election campaign, said he hopes to complete a deal by Easter.
Experts believe this could prove to be a challenging timescale as the rivals try to find common ground over key policies.
Co-leader of the Social Democrats, Lars Klingbeil, indicated a deal with Mr Merz is not a formality.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
The path to power may not be smooth for Merz
He said: “The ball is in Friedrich Merz’s court. Only the course of any talks will show whether a government can be formed.”
With US President Donald Trump back in the White House and tensions rising over how to resolve the war in Ukraine, Mr Merz wants to unify Europe in the face of challenges from the US and Russia.
“I have no illusions at all about what is happening from America,” he told supporters.
“We are under such massive pressure… my absolute priority now is really to create unity in Europe.”
Read more:
Who is Friedrich Merz – the trained pilot?
The woman at the top of Germany’s far-right AfD party
At a media conference later, he added: “There are three topics we need to talk about. Of course, external and security policy – especially following the statements coming out of Washington.
“It is clear that we as Europeans need to be able to act swiftly. We need to be able to defend ourselves. That is a topic that is a top priority in the next few weeks.”
Mr Merz said he remains “hopeful” of maintaining the transatlantic relationship, but warned if it “is destroyed, it will not only be to the detriment of Europe, it will also be to the detriment of America”.
On the other key issues, he added: “Another important topic is the immigration – that is an area where we have proposals. I suppose the Social Democrats will be prepared to talk to us about this as well.
“The third topic is the economic situation. We have to protect work in the industrial sector in Germany.”
He also earlier used social media to say “Europe stands unwaveringly by Ukraine’s side” and how “we must put Ukraine in a position of strength”.
World
A gift any Russian leader could only dream of is in Putin’s grasp – a NATO without US military support
In a strictly military sense, the war in Ukraine is not going so badly for Kyiv.
Russian territorial gains on the ground have slowed to a crawl since last November for which they are losing, on average, some 1,500 men every day.
They have almost – but still not quite – taken Toretsk. And after months of being on the verge of overwhelming the other key strategic towns of Chasiv Yar and Pokrovsk, Russian forces still remain outside them.
Russia’s massive air bombing campaign against the Ukrainian power grid, its critical infrastructure and civilian targets has not brought Kyiv to its knees, though this has been far and away the toughest winter of Russia’s air offensive against Ukraine.
And in the Black Sea, Ukraine has chased the Russian navy away from its western waters and thus kept its vital shipping routes open from the Odesa ports to the Mediterranean and the Danube Basin. This is a strategic battle Ukraine has unquestionably won.
But with so much material help from Iran, North Korea and China, Russia is obviously prepared to carry on the war, even though on current trends, its own economy will be pretty shaky by the end of this year.
If Western powers, particularly the United States, continued with their previous levels of support, then Ukraine could carry on as well, if it were minded to keep fighting, even with its more limited pool of manpower.
But the battlefield doesn’t matter much any more. The political ground has dramatically shifted under Kyiv and its principal backers in Europe.
The US seems to have suddenly reversed its position under President Trump, and it is driving Ukraine into a very rapid, so-called ‘peace deal’. Serious negotiations have not yet begun, but top US decision-makers seem to want to give Moscow more than it could ever have dreamed of when its “special military operation” in Ukraine went so spectacularly wrong three years ago.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Three years of war in Ukraine
Moscow now feels it has a very good chance of keeping all its military gains, getting even parts of the Ukrainian regions it hasn’t yet conquered, getting some relief from sanctions, US investment in its economy and re-entry into the G7, which would go back to being a G8.
It will also be making demands on what Kyiv will and will not be allowed to do and what NATO should do to “reassure” Moscow that it won’t have to invade anyone else in an act of self-defence.
Most of all, the US is holding out the tantalizing prospect to Russia that NATO’s “transatlantic dimension” may be militarily finished under the Trump administration. That implies that if the Europeans end up fighting Russia in the future, the US will stand aside.
That prospect is the greatest free gift Washington could ever give Moscow.
Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, even Gorbachev and Yeltsin, fervently wished for it but never even got close. Putin may feel it is now within his grasp, whatever happens next in Ukraine.
-
Sports2 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports11 months agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports1 year agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports3 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike
-
Business2 years agoBank of England’s extraordinary response to government policy is almost unthinkable | Ed Conway