It took 50 volunteers to collect and bury more than 600 corpses.
The streets of Bara, in Sudan’s North Kordofan state, were lined with dead bodies. They were scattered in the surrounding villages. They were left on the road that links Bara to the state capital, the strategically vital city of el-Obeid.
Most of them were killed, eyewitnesses said, in revenge attacks carried out by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
The pile-up of large numbers of dead bodies has turned Bara into a depopulated wasteland, its ground poisoned and beset by insects and scorpions.
Unknown disease is spreading rapidly because of the corpses, with the volunteers, who wear protective suits and masks, working as hard as they can to dispose safely of the remains.
New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch
Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters
Videos and photos shared exclusively with Middle East Eye show the victims of massacres that took place during a period of intense fighting in July, when the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) took the area back from the RSF.
Multiple local sources, including activists and volunteers who participated in the process of retrieving and burying the dead, told MEE that most of the bodies were civilians. The rest were fighters, from both the SAF and RSF.
On top of the more than 600 bodies that have been collected, the sources say there are hundreds more still left rotting in Bara and the surrounding countryside.
The activists, including the independent Emergency Response Rooms (ERRs), as well as volunteers from the popular resistance who have operated under the SAF’s command, accused the paramilitary RSF, which is sponsored by the United Arab Emirates and has been found by the UN and US to have committed genocide, of carrying out massacres and mass killings in the Bara area in October 2025.
Mass graves and exposed corpses
One volunteer told MEE that they had opened 200 mass graves in the area and then given a proper burial to all the corpses piled up inside. The source said that 400 other bodies had been buried.
“These efforts have been financed by many local groups including the women and men of Bara, as well as others in the diaspora, particularly those living in Gulf countries, and others in el-Obeid,” he explained.
The Sudanese health ministry, Sudanese Red Crescent and other local initiatives provided the volunteers with cases and bags, the source said.
The group is still engaged in a process of cleaning and sanitisation in order not to spread disease. “We still need a lot of logistics and supplies including fuel, gloves, face masks, sanitisers, cases and bags, among other materials,” the volunteer said.
“These corpses were found in the streets and squares as well as inside the houses,” Abdul Rahman, a leading member of the Bara resistance committee, told MEE.
“Others have been found in villages around Bara and the process is still ongoing as we believe that the number is higher than what we have from field reports.”
Abdul Rahman said there were hundreds of bodies still stranded in areas around Bara, including in Geraigikh, Jabrat al-Sheikh and Umm Syala.
The Sudanese information ministry has claimed that RSF violations have extended to more than 100 villages around Bara, with the area’s entire population having to flee their homes because of the attacks.
After a recent meeting between Bara’s local leaders and the Sudanese Information Minister Khalid Ismail Ahmed Ali el-Aisir, the ministry said the government would support victims of RSF violations by helping with medical care and reconstruction.
Bodies turned to skeletons
The photos and videos shared exclusively with MEE and published here show dead bodies that lay out in the open for months.
Some of the bodies had decomposed, while others had already turned into skeletons, a process that can take just a few weeks in a hot climate like Sudan’s.
Dozens of volunteers wearing gloves and protected uniforms collected the bodies, some of which had become simply a collection of bones. They packed them into old cars or pick-up trucks and buried them collectively.
The skeletons were of all different ages, including children and elderly people. Other, fresher bodies were of military personnel.
Volunteers described brutal conditions, dirty and poisoned ground beset by swarms of butterflies and other insects, visited by scorpions and littered with dead animals and birds.
"There is now no life left in Bara," one volunteer told MEE. The environment has totally collapsed because the vast number of dead bodies has resulted in the rapid spread of unknown diseases, they said.
“This work is hard, and we do it without direct help from the authorities or the international NGOs. The only thing we got are the mortuary bags from the Sudanese Red Crescent,” the volunteer said.
“The majority of the corpses we have retrieved from Bara and other villages are civilians killed in revenge attacks in the city after the RSF entered it last year,” Ismail Karam Aldin, a volunteer and popular resistance member, told MEE over the phone.
“These efforts are only done by the volunteers of Bara’s people led by the popular resistance in the city. The Red Crescent and the local ministry of health have only provided the cases and bags to keep the corpses and bury them.”
Sudan war continues along with external involvement
Sudan’s war began in April 2023 and is now the largest humanitarian crisis in the world, with over 11 million people forcibly displaced from their homes and at least 150,000 believed to be dead.
Both the SAF and RSF have been accused of committing war crimes, while the RSF has been found to have carried out genocide in different parts of Darfur, western Sudan.
The RSF is supported by the UAE, though Abu Dhabi continues to deny its involvement despite mounting evidence, including from the UN fact-finding mission for Sudan.
On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke in front of a map that divided Sudan between the RSF-held west, which was listed as being friendly to Israel and the UAE, and the rest of the country, which was listed as being friendly to Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Pakistan.
The SAF is supported militarily by Turkey and Egypt; the latter recently killed at least 114 people in an air strike on a gold mine on the Sudan-Egypt border.
North Kordofan has seen a wide SAF military advance in recent weeks, with the army taking control of Sodar, Um Badir, al-Mazroub and other areas, leaving most of the state back in its control.
A military source told MEE that the SAF would advance towards neighbouring West Kordofan state, particularly the cities of Al-Nuhud and Al-Khuwayyi, which are in regions rich in gum arabic.
Previously, these areas produced more than 80 percent of the world’s gum arabic, an ingredient that is vital for multinational companies like Coca Cola and Pepsi and is also used in medicines in cosmetics.
For its part, the RSF has widened drone attacks on the entire country, including on el-Obeid, Kosti in White Nile state, Atbara in the north, the capital Khartoum and its twin city Omdurman.
Diplomatic efforts to end the war continue to be ineffective.
Middle East Eye delivers independent and unrivalled coverage and analysis of the Middle East, North Africa and beyond. To learn more about republishing this content and the associated fees, please fill out this form. More about MEE can be found here.