The death toll from Sudan’s civil war is much higher than previously reported, according to a new study.
More than 61,000 people have died in Khartoum province, where the war began last year, according to a report by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine’s Sudan Research Group.
Of these, 26,000 people were killed as a result of the violence, it said, noting that the leading cause of death across Sudan was non-preventable diseases and starvation.
Many people have died in other parts of the country, especially in the western region of Darfur, where there have been many reports of atrocities and genocide.
Aid workers say the conflict in Sudan has created a dire humanitarian situation, with many thousands at risk of starvation.
Until now, the UN and other aid agencies have been using a death toll of 20,000.
Due to the wars and chaos in the country, there has never been a systematic recording of the number of people killed.
The study comes as a rights group says French military technology is being used in the conflict, in violation of the UN arms embargo.
Amnesty International on Thursday said that the Rapid Support Forces, which are fighting the militia, have been using vehicles in Darfur supplied by the United Arab Emirates and fitted with French hardware.
“Our research shows that weapons designed and manufactured in France are working on the battlefield in Sudan,” said Amnesty’s Secretary General Agnès Callamard.
The BBC has sought comment from France and the UAE, which have previously denied arming the RSF.
The Galix defense system – developed in France by the companies KNDS and Lacroix – is used by ground forces to help counter close-in attacks.
Amnesty said these weapons could be used to commit or facilitate serious human rights violations, adding that the French government must ensure that companies “immediately stop the supply of this program in the UAE”.
The rights group has shared photos, which it says it has verified, of destroyed vehicles with the Galix system visible on them.
Amnesty said French technology was used in armored vehicles such as the one sent to Darfur in violation of the UN arms embargo. [Amnesty International]
It says the UAE and France have a long-standing partnership in the defense sector and cited a parliamentary report showing that French companies had delivered nearly 2.6bn euros ($2.74bn; £2.16bn) in military equipment to the UAE between 2014 and 2023. .
It says companies have a responsibility to respect human rights and conduct “due diligence throughout their value chain”.
Amnesty says it contacted the affected companies and the French authorities about the use of the security system but did not receive a response.
“If France cannot guarantee through export controls, including end-user certification, that the weapons will not be sent back to Sudan, it should not authorize that transfer,” he said.
The UN first imposed an arms embargo on Darfur in 2004, following allegations of genocide against the region’s non-Arab population.
Amnesty has called for the ban to be extended to all of Sudan, and for its monitoring system to be strengthened following the outbreak of civil war.
Amnesty has called on all countries to stop supplying weapons directly and indirectly to the warring groups in Sudan.
The military RSF, led by General Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, has been fighting the Sudanese regular army under Abdel Fattah al-Burhan since April 2023 when the former allies clashed in a bitter struggle.
The RSF has been accused of ethnic cleansing in Darfur, which it has denied, accusing the local military.
Both groups are accused of war crimes, and the ongoing fighting has left thousands dead and millions homeless.
In August, a UN-backed expert committee declared famine conditions in parts of Darfur.
The head of the World Health Organization said hunger is “almost everywhere” following a visit to the country a month later.
“The situation in Sudan is very shocking… mass migration – now it’s the biggest famine in the world, and of course, famine,” director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told the BBC.
The combination of war, famine, displacement and disease in Sudan has overshadowed the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East around the world.
A study by the Sudan Research Group found that 90% of the people who died in Khartoum were undocumented, indicating a similar situation in other regions.
Mayson Dahab, the lead researcher, said they don’t have enough data to estimate death rates in other parts of the country or determine how many deaths are all unrelated to the war.
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