In all, Reuters identified 14 burial grounds in five communities across Darfur that have expanded rapidly in recent months. The area of new graves at these burial grounds has grown up to three times faster in the first half of 2024 than in the second half of last year. That increase, moreover, came on top of an already-high base: The region saw weeks of violence in the last six months of 2023 that resulted in many deaths…The satellite images – combined with food insecurity data, photos and videos of emaciated children, and interviews with dozens of people from 20 communities across Darfur – reveal how hunger and disease are spreading rapidly in Sudan…In charting the spike in mortality in the five Darfur communities, Reuters reviewed hundreds of satellite images of burial grounds over a period of several years. The recent expansion in the area of new graves may in part be due to higher mortality as a result of the influx of people into the camps who have fled violence. Nevertheless, the Reuters calculation of how much the burial grounds have expanded is likely an underestimate: It doesn’t account for new graves that have been dug in between existing ones in many places, for instance, or for the fact that there are small patches of graves not easily identifiable in satellite images. Reuters only reviewed communities in which there hasn’t been fighting in the past six months to rule out the possibility that this year’s burial-ground expansion may be due to an increase in the number of people killed in conflict.
(Reuters)
