245 French and foreign nationals recently evacuated from Sudan landed on Wednesday morning at Roissy Charles-de-Gaulle airport in a plane chartered by the French authorities, AFP noted.
Their plane, coming from Djibouti, landed on the tarmac around 7:30 a.m. from Paris (5:30 a.m. GMT). Among the passengers, welcomed by French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna, were 195 French people, but also Dutch, Italians, New Zealanders and Sudanese, we learned from the Quai d’Orsay.
Present on landing, French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna wished to say “welcome, welcome home” and “pay tribute” to the diplomatic corps and the armed forces involved in the evacuation operations, she said. told a handful of reporters present.
The evacuations by air led by France are “completed”, said Catherine Colonna. A French frigate, La Lorraine, is in the Red Sea to take part in the evacuations organized by the UN between Port-Sudan and Jeddah, in Saudi Arabia.
These evacuations took place “in a country that is at war. We took advantage of lulls, but there were always shootings. They never completely stopped. So you have to proceed very carefully,” she said minutes before the passengers arrived.
France has evacuated a total of 538 people, including 209 French, from Sudan, President Emmanuel Macron announced on Tuesday, detailing the “Operation Sagittarius” mounted by France, for which some 150 soldiers are mobilized, “elements of protection, others reconnaissance, logistical support and medical personnel”, in a “volatile situation”, where the two sides “continue to wage war, even during the truces”, according to the general staff of the French armies. One of them was injured during the operation.
Sudan has seen 11 days of bloody 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).
The fighting left more than 459 dead and more than 4,000 injured according to the UN.
