Huge wall of dust smothers city to turn sky blood red

Video footage reveals the apocalyptic scenes as the city of Khartoum is engulfed in a huge sand storm. 

Buildings, cars and people are left covered in a blanket of dust as the wall of dust rolls in. 

The storm temporarily blocked out the Sun as a resident captured the moment the city descended into a red mist. 

Only the outlines of buildings can be seen through the haze as the capital city of Sudan is overcome by the wall of dust. 

Motorists are seen battling their way through the storm and flashing their fog lights in a desperate attempt to see as the front sweeps through the city. 

Dubbed a “haboob”, the Arabic word for “violent wind”, the intense sand storms usually take place in the aftermath of a thunderstorm with rising temperatures and falling pressures whipping up the weather front. 

In 2015 a giant unprecedented dust storm swept across seven countries in the Middle East in a week leaving at least 12 people dead. 

Haboobs are known to travel for thousands of miles and are said to have increased in Sudan in recent years. 

Experts have warned the region could become uninhabitable due to climate change as temperatures soar with the rapid sand storms destroying fertile soil and valuable crops.

The dust storms also push the rate of evaporation to dangerous levels in a region struggling to preserve water supplies. 

Jos Lelieveld, a climate scientist from the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, said: “North Africa is already hot and is strongly increasing in temperature. At some point in this century, part of the region will become uninhabitable.

“That will string from Morocco all the way through to Saudi Arabia.”

Sudan’s temperature is expected to rise between 1.1°C and 3.3°C by 2060.