(Port Sudan) “This is unprecedented,” said Salaheddine Hamad on Thursday from the coastal city of Port Sudan in eastern Sudan, where torrential rains killed five people the day before, according to police in a country already ravaged by more than fifteen months of war.
Heavy rains usually fall in Sudan between May and October, during which time the country faces severe flooding that damages homes, infrastructure and crops.
However, “such rains in summer are unheard of, it’s climate change,” Hamad told AFP. The day before, the police in Port Sudan announced “the death of five people after a balcony collapsed following heavy rains.”
“The buildings cannot withstand these torrential rains, some have been damaged, others flooded,” said Fatah Ibrahim, another resident of the country’s main port on the Red Sea.
The city “is not ready to cope with this amount of rain,” says Shahinaz Mohammed.
“I was supposed to go to university but there is no transport, everything is flooded because we don’t have a proper drainage system,” the student told AFP.
In a statement released Tuesday, the UN warned of the plight of “several thousand people, mainly internally displaced, affected by heavy rains and flooding that have hit parts of Kassala province in eastern Sudan,” 500 kilometers south of Port Sudan.
As the rainy season approaches, aid agencies have warned that torrential rains and flooding will isolate entire regions.
Every year, they claim many victims, directly or indirectly because of diseases caused by humidity.
The damage is expected to be particularly severe this year, after more than 15 months of war have severely damaged infrastructure and forced millions of displaced people to seek refuge in flood-prone areas.
Since April 2023, this war has pitted the army, led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane, against the paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces (FSR) of his former deputy, General Mohamed Hamdane Daglo.
Both sides have been accused of war crimes, including deliberately targeting civilians and blocking humanitarian aid, in the conflict that has killed tens of thousands and displaced more than 10 million people, according to the UN.