Dozens of animals in Sudan’s capital zoo, including an elderly crocodile, parrots, and enormous lizards, are reported to have died after the zoo became inaccessible due to street violence between competing factions in the country.
According to Sara Abdalla, chief biologist at the Sudan Museum of Natural History, at least 100 animals held in enclosures will have gone more than three weeks without water or food.
Millions of Sudanese civilians have been affected by food, water, and medical shortages as a result of the conflict’s disruption of the most basic services. But, while the sound of explosives echoes across Khartoum, Sara Abdalla is preoccupied with concern for the animals she cares for, particularly those that are becoming increasingly rare in Sudan.
“I feel a lot of misery and sadness, as well as helplessness,” she said in a telephone interview from Khartoum. “I guess we lost the birds and the mammals .”
There are African gray parrots, vervet monkeys, enormous lizards known as Nile monitor lizards, desert tortoises, horned vipers, and Nubian spitting cobras at the zoo. All of these animals were fed twice a day prior to the fighting. According to Mr Abdalla, the last time they received food and, in some cases, medicine was on April 14, the day before the violence began.
The fight involves the Sudanese army, led by General Abdel-Fattah Burhane, head of the ruling Sovereign Council, against formidable quick support paramilitary groups, putting an end to months of tensions between opposing Sudanese generals. General Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, Burhane’s deputy in the council, commands the Rapid Support Forces (FSR). Sara Abdalla claims that neither had responded to calls to open the zoo to the public.
Much of Khartoum and the neighboring city of Omdurman became battlefields during the conflict, with both sides employing heavy weaponry, including artillery and aircraft, inside urban areas. Urban violence has badly damaged infrastructure and property, putting citizens in danger as they try to navigate city streets.
Residents fleeing the capital reported seeing bodies on the sidewalks and central plazas, particularly near the museum. According to the Sudanese Doctors’ Union, roughly 500 people have been killed in the fighting so far, although the actual death toll is estimated to be higher.
The zoo, which is located on the grounds of the University of Khartoum, is one of Sudan’s oldest. It was founded around a century ago as part of Gordon Memorial College, an educational institution erected in the early 1900s while Sudan was part of the British Empire. It was added to the University of Khartoum two years after Sudan’s independence in 1956.
Its current site is near the army headquarters, where fighting was heavy, making entrance to the museum impossible.
Sara Abdalla, who teaches zoology at the University of Khartoum, started working at the museum in 2006 and was appointed director of the establishment in 2020.
She had dreamed of this position since she had visited the museum as a child. Now locked in her home in south Khartoum with her husband and their two children – Yara, 9, and Mohamed, 4 – she worries about the animals who have already survived years of turmoil, economic collapse and shutdown due to pandemic.
