The extreme situation in Sudan is pushing several countries to act. France, Germany, the United States, the United Kingdom and other countries began on Sunday April 23 to evacuate their nationals or their diplomatic personnel from Sudan, where deadly fighting between the army and paramilitaries has been raging for more than one week.
Two French military planes carrying 200 people of different nationalities landed in Djibouti. The German army announced that it had evacuated 101 people from Sudan by military aircraft. “The first Airbus A400M is on its way to Jordan with its 101 evacuees,” the army said on Twitter, adding that two other planes had been dispatched to Sudan to help with the evacuations.
Italy on Sunday evacuated all its nationals who had asked to leave Sudan, announced Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who called “for the end of the war and the opening of negotiations”. “All of our fellow citizens who had requested to leave have been evacuated,” she said in a statement. Earlier in the day, his Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani had spoken of the evacuation by the Italian army “of around 200 people, including Swiss nationals and members of the apostolic nunciature”, the embassy of the Holy Headquarters in Sudan.
The Spanish government announced on Sunday the evacuation of around 100 people from Sudan. “The Spanish military plane took off from Khartoum shortly before 11 p.m. with around 100 passengers,” the statement said, adding that the plane was en route to Djibouti.
Egypt, a large neighbor to the north, announced the evacuation “by land of 436 nationals” as gunfire and explosions again rocked the Sudanese capital Khartoum on Sunday, according to witnesses. Pope Francis called for “dialogue” in the face of the “serious” situation in the country, where, since April 15, the two generals in power since their 2021 putsch have embarked on a merciless war.
The violence, mainly in Khartoum and Darfur, in the west, left more than 420 dead and 3,700 injured, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). They have displaced tens of thousands of people to other states in Sudan, or to Chad and Egypt. Reconnaissance operations are being carried out to “secure” as much as possible the routes taken by the civilians, who have been grouped together upstream, to get to an airport in the Khartoum region, said this source.
Among the countries that have requested the help of France to evacuate their citizens, the diplomatic source has listed Germany, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Niger, Morocco, Egypt, or even the Ethiopia, without specifying whether these nationals were on either plane.
After more than a week of fighting between the army of General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane, Sudan’s de facto ruler, and his deputy-turned-rival, General Mohamed Hamdane Daglo, who commands the much feared paramilitary Rapid Support Forces ( FSR), those who arrived at the airport were “tired, tense, but very relieved to have arrived safely”, according to the French sources. They are “psychologically weakened by what they have been through” but in relatively good physical condition, while food, water and energy are lacking in the capital Khartoum from the same sources.
In addition to the air option, the French authorities had considered an evacuation by land, which was finally ruled out given the difficulties in refueling, in particular, that it would have caused. Four planes had been prepositioned for a few days in Djibouti and other resources are on standby in Chad for the operation, according to the staff. Maritime assets have also been deployed off the Sudanese side “for all practical purposes”, it was further specified.