Looters are packing statuettes and pieces of old palaces onto lorries, sneaking them out of the war-torn nation, and selling them online, stealing Sudan’s valuable archeological legacy from museums.
Tens of thousands of people have died in almost a year of fighting between competing generals, forcing millions more to escape their homes and leaving the nation’s valuable artifacts vulnerable to looters.
The United Nations educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) declared on Thursday that there is a “threat to culture appears to have reached an unprecedented level, with reports of looting of museums, heritage and archaeological sites and private collections”.
In the capital Khartoum, where fighting broke out in April 2023 between the army and paramilitary forces, the recently renovated Sudan National Museum has had prized artefacts stolen, archaeologists and officials say.
The museum holds Pharaonic and Nubian artifacts, as well as ancient artefacts from the Palaeolithic age and artifacts from the well-known site of Kerma in northern Sudan.
The museum was established in 1971, partly to exhibit artifacts that had been saved from an area that would have flooded during the construction of Egypt’s gigantic Aswan dam.
War is now a threat to its artifacts.
“The Sudan National Museum has been the subject of major looting,” said Ikhlas Abdel Latif, head of museums at the national antiquities authority.
“Archaeological objects stored there have been taken in big lorries and transferred to the west and to border areas, particularly near South Sudan,” she told AFP.
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