Sudan witnesses burial of 15,000 bodies across Khartoum state

Since April 2024, Sudan's Forensic Medicine Authority has overseen the collection, transportation and burial of 15,000 bodies from neighbourhoods and schools across Khartoum state.

Having been swiftly buried by civilians - often under duress - or dumped in mass graves by fighters from the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the bodies have now been laid to rest in official cemeteries. 

An official source at Khartoum state's health ministry, of which the Forensic Medicine Authority is a part, told the Sudan Tribune over the weekend that they were aiming to make sure that all bodies buried outside cemeteries had been moved inside them by the middle of 2026.

The source said the RSF, which has been at war with the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) since April 2023 and which controlled much of the capital city and its surrounding areas from the beginning of the war until March 2025, had forced civilians to bury their dead in neighbourhoods and schools.

Residents of Khartoum and its twin cities, Omdurman and Bahri, have told Middle East Eye that getting safely to cemeteries was impossible while fighting was raging in the capital. 

The campaign to collect bodies in Khartoum, which has also involved charities including the Red Crescent, began in March 2024.

State authorities said efforts to move bodies to designated burial sites addressed the impact of Sudan's war, as the RSF prevented citizens from using cemeteries, forcing them to bury relatives in public squares, schools, mosques, and homes.

Mass graves

In June 2025, Bridgadier al-Rayah Dafallah, an officer in the Sudanese army, told MEE that people were being discovered in unusual places across Khartoum. "Bodies have even been found buried under the floor in houses," he said.

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In a morgue at a university used by the RSF as a base, MEE found three tanks holding around 20 corpses. Some were badly decomposed, collapsing together into a dark morass. 

Other impromptu cemeteries and mass grave cities litter Sudan. Victims of atrocities have described seeing people buried alive, of streets strewn with corpses, of beds, blankets and mattresses used to drag bodies into squares, where they are then dumped.

In el-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur taken by the RSF in late October, satellite imagery analysed by Yale's Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL) has shown the existence of mass graves.

Both sides in the war have been accused of committing atrocities, while the RSF, which is backed by the United Arab Emirates, has been accused of committing genocide against non-Arab groups in Darfur - a charge it denies. 

No official or precise death toll for the war in Sudan exists, but as early as October 2024, Waseem Ahmad, then the CEO of charity Islamic Relief, told MEE that his team in Sudan estimated the figure to be as high as 200,000.