A recent study by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine’s Sudan Research Group has revealed that the death toll from Sudan’s civil war is far greater than previously known.
The conflict, which began in April 2023 between General al-Burhan’s army (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), has claimed over 61,000 lives in Khartoum state alone.
Of these, 26,000 died directly from violence, while preventable disease and starvation were the main killers nationwide.
The report highlights even higher unrecorded death tolls, particularly in Darfur, a region marked by atrocities and alleged ethnic cleansing. The United Nations and humanitarian agencies had previously cited 20,000 confirmed deaths, but the absence of systematic documentation has obscured the true scale of fatalities.
The war has created what aid organizations describe as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, leading to famine, mass displacement, and severe shortages of food and medical supplies. The ongoing violence, however, has been largely overshadowed by global attention on conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East.
