BREAKING: ‘Ghost Towns’ in Southern Zuhlgan, Aid Worker Describes ‘Streets of the Dead’ via Satellite Phone
Ozákla, Zuhlgan— A senior aid worker with Krauanagaz-based Doctors Without Borders (NLL) has described vast swaths of Southern Zuhlgan as “ghost towns” in a harrowing satellite phone call received early this morning, painting a picture of near-total societal collapse as the historic heatwave and prolonged power blackout enter their third and second days, respectively.
The aid worker, identified only as “Elena” for security reasons, is one of the few international personnel still operating inside the blackout zone. Reaching this GW via a crackling satellite connection, she described scenes she said she would “carry to my grave.”
“There is no one on the streets,” Elena said. “Not because they have evacuated. Because they are dead. The bodies are inside the homes, they litter the sidewalks, they are in cars where they sought shelter from the sun. The living have stopped moving the dead. There is no one left to do it.”
NLL has confirmed the authenticity of the communication but declined to provide Elena’s full identity or exact location, citing “extreme security risks and the ongoing collapse of civil order” in the affected regions.
According to Elena, in Kurthez, a city of approximately 280,000 people before the heatwave and a suburb of the provincial capital of Lumayyaratal, has been reduced to what she called “a city of corpses.”
“I have walked through war zones. I have seen famine. I have never, ever, seen anything like this,” she said. “The power never came back. The water stopped around 4 AM. By morning, people were drinking from toilets. Now, there is no one left to drink anything. The streets are silent. The only sound is the wind and the flies.”
Elena estimates that in the neighborhoods she has been able to survey, fewer than one in ten residents appear to be alive. She described entire apartment buildings where every visible window is dark, every door closed, and no sound emerges from within.
“I knocked on doors in one building yesterday,” she said. “Fifteen apartments. In twelve of them, no one answered. In two, I found bodies. In one, I found a woman still alive, barely conscious, lying next to her dead husband. She did not know he was dead. She thought he was sleeping. I had to tell her. Then I had to leave her because there was no way to move her and no place to take her that was any safer than where she was.”
Elena reported that traditional burial and cremation practices have completely broken down across Southern Zuhlgan. Religious authorities, who typically oversee death rituals in the Dominion, are themselves among the dead or are unable to reach the affected areas due to infrastructure collapse.
“At first, families tried to bury their own,” she said. “But the ground is baked hard as stone. You cannot dig without machinery. So the bodies were left in the streets or on roofs, covered with sheets or blankets. Then there were too many bodies for sheets. Now the bodies are just… there. Everywhere. The smell is indescribable.”
According to Elena, the Zuhlgani government has not been seen in Kurthez or surrounding towns since the power outage began. No military personnel. No emergency services. No officials of any kind.
“The Divine Committee speaks from the capital emergency center, wherever that is,” she said, her voice trembling with anger and exhaustion. “But they are not here. They have not come. The people of Kurthez have been abandoned by their own government. They died alone, in the dark, without water, without anyone to hold their hands.”
In Krauanagaz, where the heatwave continues to devastate Northern, Central, and South-Central regions, officials have begun using similar language to describe the hardest-hit areas.
“We are seeing ghost towns in the low-lying inland valleys of South Zhzoatal Province,” said a Federation emergency coordinator who spoke on condition of anonymity. “Whole villages where the population has been reduced by half or more. The survivors are walking out, leaving the dead behind, because there is no help coming. Our resources are overwhelmed. We simply cannot reach everyone.”
The Federation’s HHS department confirmed that mass graves are now being prepared in multiple provinces, and that refrigerated truck convoys continue to transport bodies from overwhelmed morgues to temporary storage sites.
“We are not even trying to identify every body anymore,” the coordinator said. “We are photographing them, bagging them, and burying them. We will sort out the records later— if there is anyone left to do the sorting.”
The World Forum has issued an emergency declaration for all of Southern Cordilia, describing the situation as “an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe.” The WF Relief Coalition has begun airlifting supplies to staging areas in Okhoa and southern Krauanagaz, but access to Southern Zuhlgan remains extremely limited due to the complete absence of functioning infrastructure.
“We have aid. We have personnel. We have supplies,” said a WF logistics coordinator. “What we do not have is a way to get them to the people who need them. The airports are closed. The roads are blocked by abandoned vehicles and bodies. The ports have no power to unload ships. We are throwing supplies at a wall and hoping some of them break through.”
NLL has issued an urgent appeal for additional personnel, supplies, and funding, warning that the death toll will continue to rise even after temperatures drop, due to secondary effects including dehydration-related organ failure, disease from decomposing bodies, and the collapse of medical care for chronic conditions.
Elena, the NLL aid worker, concluded her satellite phone call with a message that she asked be broadcast “so the world knows what happened here.”
“The people of Kurthez did not die because of a heatwave,” she said. “They died because their government left them. Because the power grid failed and no one fixed it. Because the water stopped and no one turned it back on. Because when they cried for help, no one came. I am still here because I have a satellite phone and a bag of rice and a bottle of iodine tablets. But I do not know if I will make it out. And if I do not, I want someone to tell my family that I was here. That I saw. That I did not look away.”
The connection crackled and faded. Attempts to re-establish contact have been unsuccessful.
The Zuhlgani government has still not issued any public statement regarding the situation in Kurthez or other affected areas. The World Forum has demanded immediate access for international aid workers and has called for an emergency session to address what several delegates have termed “potential crimes against humanity” arising from the government’s alleged abandonment of its citizens.
For now, Southern Zuhlgan remains in darkness. And in the towns and cities where the power may never come back on, the dead vastly outnumber the living.
“This is not a disaster anymore,” Elena said in her final transmission. “This is an extinction. And we are watching it happen in real time.”