Humanitarian agencies and Sudanese authorities were working on deploying more teams to address the urgent needs of the people affected by the Sunday collapse of the Arba’at Dam, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has reported.
OCHA’s initial reports indicated that at least 30 people were killed when the dam, located approximately 38km northwest of Port Sudan in the Red Sea State, suffered extensive damage due to heavy rains. Scores of others were reportedly missing or displaced and the death toll was likely to be much higher.
The UN agency said 84 boreholes had collapsed; 10,000 heads of livestock/animals were missing; and 70 schools were either damaged or destroyed.
Authorities, OCHA said, put the number of those severely affected to at least 50,000 people living in areas to the west of the dam. It, however, noted that damage to the telecommunication network had made it difficult to gather more accurate information on the situation.
The affected people were in urgent need of water, food, and shelter assistance.
The Arba’at Dam is a crucial facility for Port Sudan, serving as a primary source of freshwater for the city. The reported damage is expected to have a substantial impact on water supplies to Port Sudan.
The tragedy comes when Sudan was in the throes of a protracted civil war pitting the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The war that broke out in April 2023 has claimed thousands of lives and displaced many more, occasioning a humanitarian disaster.
The Arba’at Dam neighborhood, in particular, has faced immense humanitarian challenges. The region hosts an estimated 240,000 displaced people, according to the UN International Organization for Migration.