According to the Associated Press, most of the children died from lack of food or fever. 26 died on Friday and Saturday.
The extent of the children’s suffering was revealed through interviews with more than ten doctors, volunteers, health officials and workers at the Maigoma orphanage.
The Associated Press also reviewed dozens of documents, photos and video clips that show deteriorating conditions at the facility.
Wrapped corpses of children
A video clip taken by orphanage workers showed the bodies of children tightly wrapped in white sheets awaiting burial. In other footage, 24 children, clad only in diapers, sit on the floor of a room, many of them sobbing, while a woman holds two metal water jugs. Another woman sits on the ground with her back to the camera, rocking back and forth, apparently cradling a child.
An orphanage worker later explained that the babies had been moved to the large room after nearby shelling covered another part of the facility in thick dust last week.
“It’s a catastrophic situation,” Afkar Omar Mustafa, a volunteer at the orphanage, said in a phone interview. “It was something we expected from day one (of the fights).”
Among the dead were babies as young as three months old, according to death certificates, as well as four orphanage officials and workers for the charities now helping the facility.
The highest number of deaths
The start of the week saw the highest number of deaths, with 14 children killed on Friday and 12 on Saturday. The deaths at the orphanage have sparked anxiety and outrage on social media, and a local charity has managed to deliver food, medicine and baby formula to the orphanage, with the help of the UNICEF and the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Orphanage workers have warned that more children could die and called for their rapid evacuation from the war-torn capital Khartoum.
The battle for control of Sudan erupted on April 15 between the Sudanese army led by Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the rapid support paramilitary forces led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.
The fighting has turned Khartoum and other urban areas into battlefields. Many homes and civilian infrastructure were looted or damaged by shells and stray bullets.
The conflict has taken a heavy toll on civilians, especially children. More than 860 civilians, including at least 190 children, have been killed and thousands more injured since April 15, according to the Sudan Doctors Syndicate, which tracks civilian casualties. The exact number is probably much higher.
Thousands of people flee
More than 1.65 million people have fled to safer areas in Sudan or crossed into neighboring countries. Others remain stuck inside their homes, unable to escape as food and water supplies dwindle. The clashes also disrupted the work of humanitarian organizations.
According to UNICEF, more than 13.6 million children are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance in Sudan, compared to around nine million before the war.
As of Monday, there were at least 341 children in the orphanage, including 165 infants aged one to six months and 48 aged seven to 12 months, according to data obtained by The Associated Press. The rest of the 128 children are between 1 and 13 years old.
Among those at the orphanage were more than 20 children who had been brought from hospitals in Khartoum after the outbreak of fighting. Heba Abdullah, who joined the orphanage as a child and is now a nurse there, said hospitals where children receive advanced care have been forced to close due to a lack of electricity or bombings in proximity.
Spokespersons for the military, Rapid Support Forces, Ministry of Health and Ministry of Social Development, which oversees the orphanage, did not respond to requests for comment on the incidents that took place in the orphanage.
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