dpa
Khartoum
Sudan’s de facto president and commander-in-chief of the army, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, has agreed to evacuate citizens and diplomatic representatives from the embattled country. An army spokesman said on Saturday that the United States, Britain, France and China would begin evacuating from the capital Khartoum “in the coming hours” using military transport aircraft.
Al-Burhan has pledged to “facilitate and guarantee” the evacuation and to provide the countries with “the necessary support to ensure this,” the spokesman said. He said that a Saudi Arabian delegation has already been evacuated from the eastern city of Port Sudan on the Red Sea, adding that a Jordanian delegation was also to be flown out of Port Sudan, some 850 kilometres from the Sudanese capital, later on, Saturday.
According to the Saudi’s al-Arabiya, five Saudi ships brought 158 people from Sudan to the Red Sea city of Jeddah. Among them were diplomats and citizens from Saudi Arabia, Bulgaria, Canada, Qatar, Kuwait, Egypt, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, India, Pakistan, Burkina Faso and the Philippines, according to the Saudi Foreign Ministry.
In Sudan, the army was in control of all airports except those in Khartoum and the town of Njala in the South Darfur region, al-Burhan told Al-Arabiya. The country’s de facto president said he remained in control of the army and would only let his rival and former deputy Mohammed Hamdan Daglo, the leader of the powerful paramilitary group RSF, get away “in a coffin.”
Fighting broke out in Sudan about a week ago between the country’s two most powerful generals and their respective military units. According to WHO, at least 413 people have lost their lives, and more than 3,500 have been injured since the fighting began. The airport in the capital Khartoum has been at the centre of the fighting and was therefore inaccessible. Diplomats have been trying to secure a resilient ceasefire to evacuate foreign citizens for days. After a brief ceasefire on Friday due to the Muslim Eid al-Fitr celebrations that mark the end of Ramadan, fighting continued overnight.
On Saturday morning, Khartoum was bombed again, a reporter told DPA. Shots rang out in the city, and eyewitnesses writing on Twitter reported explosions in the capital.
The ceasefire largely held during the night, the reporter said. There were only “sporadic clashes.” On Saturday, the US embassy in Khartoum said that the ongoing fighting and closure of the airport in the capital made it impossible to evacuate US citizens. The embassy continues to monitor the situation in Khartoum and surrounding areas closely, it said in a statement. Apart from the fighting between the rival forces, there are reports of attacks, home invasions and looting.
