The streets of Khartoum State bear witness to an increasingly unspoken tragedy. Ruined buildings, displaced families, and mass graves tell the story of a war whose impact has remained largely silent to the outside world.

Over the first 14 months of the conflict in Sudan, an estimated 61,000 lives were lost in this state alone. These deaths, according to a groundbreaking report by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), mark a 50% increase from pre-war mortality rates, with 26,000 of these fatalities directly caused by violence.

The magnitude of this loss becomes even more staggering when considering that over 90% of deaths have reportedly gone unrecorded. The chaos of war has stripped the country of the infrastructure needed to document its own suffering.

If Khartoum’s figures are an indication, the death toll in other regions—especially Darfur and Kordofan—could be far higher than reported.