Foreign countries rushed to evacuate their nationals from Sudan as deadly fighting raged into a second week between forces loyal to two rival generals, according to France24.
Evacuation flights were continuing early Monday, with hundreds of people flown out overnight on military aircraft. Foreigners also fled the capital Khartoum in a long United Nations convoy, while millions of frightened residents hunkered down inside their homes, many running low on water and food.
US special forces launched a rescue mission Sunday for around 100 embassy staff and their relatives, swooping in with Chinook helicopters to fly them to a military base in Djibouti. US forces “will remain deployed in Djibouti to protect United States personnel and others until the security situation no longer requires their presence”, President Joe Biden said Sunday in a letter to the Speaker of the House.
Across the city of five million, army and paramilitary troops have fought street battles since April 15. More than 420 people have been killed and thousands wounded, according to UN figures, amid fears of wider turmoil and a humanitarian disaster in one of the world’s poorest nations.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said UK forces had also rescued diplomats and their families while Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his country had temporarily suspended its evacuation operation.
“Our diplomats are safe – they have been extracted and are working from outside the country,” Trudeau tweeted.
Germany and France meanwhile said they had also begun evacuating their nationals and those from other countries. Two French planes carrying around 200 people of multiple nationalities landed in Djibouti. Italy evacuated about 300 people in total, according to their foreign ministries.
Ireland said it was also dispatching an emergency team to assist with evacuating its citizens and their dependants. Egypt, Sudan’s large neighbour to the north, said it had evacuated 436 nationals by land.
Long convoys of UN vehicles and buses were seen leaving Khartoum heading east to Port Sudan on the Red Sea, 850 kilometres away by road, carrying “citizens from all over the world”, according to one Sierra Leonean evacuee.
The fighting broke out on April 15 between forces loyal to army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his deputy turned rival Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, who commands the powerful paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Daglo’s RSF emerged from the Janjaweed fighters whom former leader Omar al-Bashir unleashed in the Darfur region, where they were accused of war crimes including genocide.
Multiple truces have been agreed in recent days, and ignored. Khartoum’s airport, where the blackened hulls of destroyed aircraft lie on runways, is under the control of the RSF.
The scramble by foreigners to escape has heightened fears among Sudanese of what will happen when diplomats who could act as potential mediators have gone.