Sudan – live: Final evacuation flight for fleeing Britons leaves as violence resumes

Hundreds of Americans fleeing two weeks of deadly fighting in Sudan reached the east African nation’s port Saturday in the first U.S.-run evacuation, completing a dangerous land journey under escort of armed drones.

American unmanned aircraft, which have been keeping an eye on overland evacuation routes for days, provided armed overwatch for a bus convoy carrying 200 to 300 Americans over 500 miles or 800 kilometers to Port Sudan, a place of relative safety, U.S. officials said.

The U.S., which had none of its officials on the ground for the evacuation, has been criticized by families of trapped Americans in Sudan for initially ruling out any U.S.-run evacuation for those among an estimated 16,000 Americans in Sudan who wish to leave.

A further 363 Indonesian citizens evacuated from Sudan arrived home on Sunday on a second flight by the country’s flag carrier Garuda Indonesia, the country’s foreign ministry said.

The conflict between Sudan‘s army and a paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has triggered a rush to extract foreign diplomats and citizens by several countries including Indonesia, United States, Japan, Germany and Britain.

A first group of Indonesian evacuees arrived back in the country on Friday, and a total of 748 citizens have been evacuated from Sudan as of Sunday.

“Not only Indonesian citizens, the government of Indonesia also helped evacuate a number of foreign citizens,” the foreign ministry said in a statement, without providing details how many foreigners Indonesia has evacuated.

Tension had been building for months between Sudan’s army and the RSF, which together toppled a civilian government in an October 2021 coup.

The friction was brought to a head by an internationally-backed plan to launch a new transition with civilian parties. A final deal was due to be signed earlier in April, on the fourth anniversary of the overthrow of long-ruling autocrat Omar al-Bashir in a popular uprising.

Both the army and the RSF were required to cede power under the plan and two issues proved particularly contentious: one was the timetable for the RSF to be integrated into the regular armed forces, the second was when the army would be formally placed under civilian oversight.

Joe Sommerlad reports:

The UK will continue to provide support for British nationals in Sudan now that evacuation flights have ended, the transport secretary has said.

Mark Harper told Sky News’s Sophy Ridge On Sunday programme: “The evacuation that we have conducted is the longest and largest evacuation of any western nation.

“We have taken out 1,888 British nationals, which I think is a testimony to the hard work of both those on the ground who have put themselves at risk and also those working at HQ to get that evacuation in place.”

He added: “We have now got some staff based at Port Sudan which is where we are going to continue providing consular support for British nationals that have chosen to remain in the country.”

Airstrikes rocked parts of Sudan’s capital Khartoum on Saturday despite the extended ceasefire by the country’s two warring factions, as the former Sudanese prime minister urged both sides to get together for peace talks.

Terrified residents in some areas of the city reported explosions nearby and fighters ransacking houses, although residents in other areas said shops were reopening as the scale of the fighting dwindled.

Clashes were continuing around the presidential palace as well as the state broadcaster’s HQ and a military base in Khartoum.

The country’s former prime minister Abdalla Hamdok on Saturday urged for both sides to come together for peace talks to stop a full-blown civil war on the scale of the Libya and Syria conflicts.

Red Cross aid has arrived in Port Sudan.

This is the first shipment of humanitarian aid to arrive in the war-torn country since clashes exacerbated, killing hundreds of civilians.

Hundreds of Americans fleeing two weeks of deadly fighting in Sudan reached the east African nation’s port Saturday in the first U.S.-run evacuation, completing a dangerous land journey under escort of armed drones.

American unmanned aircraft, which have been keeping an eye on overland evacuation routes for days, provided armed overwatch for a bus convoy carrying 200 to 300 Americans over 500 miles or 800 kilometers to Port Sudan, a place of relative safety, U.S. officials said.

The U.S., which had none of its officials on the ground for the evacuation, has been criticized by families of trapped Americans in Sudan for initially ruling out any U.S.-run evacuation for those among an estimated 16,000 Americans in Sudan who wish to leave.

The conflict between Sudan‘s army and a paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has triggered a rush to evacuate foreign diplomats and citizens.

Several countries have taken nationals out by air, while some have gone via Port Sudan on the Red Sea, about 800 km (500 miles) by road from Khartoum. This is the status of some countries’ efforts:

UNITED STATES

U.S. forces evacuated American and some foreign diplomats on April 22.

A convoy organized by the U.S. government arrived at a Sudanese port city on Saturday, evacuating U.S. citizens, local staff and others, a U.S. State Department spokesperson said.

Washington has previously said it was positioning naval assets to assist evacuations if necessary.

BRITAIN

Britain said it has evacuated 1,888 people, mostly British nationals and their dependents, on 21 flights since Tuesday. The government decided the last evacuation flight would leave on Saturday evening, citing a decline in demand from British nationals and continued volatility on the ground.

The government had estimated there were about 4,000 Britons in Sudan. It evacuated its diplomats and their families on April 22.

Cyprus said it had activated a humanitarian rescue mechanism at Britain’s request to let third countries use it for reception and repatriation of foreign citizens evacuated from Sudan. Cyprus is home to two large British military bases.

EGYPT

Egypt has evacuated a total of 6,399 Egyptians, 1,072 of whom were evacuated on Friday. The Egyptian Foreign Ministry said on Thursday some 16,000 people had crossed from Sudan to Egypt, including 14,000 Sudanese citizens.

GERMANY

Germany said on Wednesday it had ended its operation to evacuate people from Sudan, with over 700 people flown out of the country, including around 200 German citizens. Germany’s evacuation mission brought out people from more than 30 countries, including Belgian, British, Dutch, Jordanian and U.S. citizens as well as Germans.

FRANCE

The French government said on Thursday that it had so far evacuated a total of 936 people from Sudan. Those included not only French nationals but also Britons, Americans, Canadians, Ethiopians, Dutch, Italians and Swedes.

The United Nations secretary-general thanked France for its “vital assistance” in transporting 400 U.N. personnel and their dependents out of Sudan.

ITALY

Italian military planes flying from Djibouti evacuated 83 Italians and 13 others, including children and the Italian ambassador. Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said some Italian NGO workers and missionaries had decided to stay in Sudan, while 19 others had been taken to Egypt.

NETHERLANDS

About 100 Dutch nationals have been evacuated from Sudan since April 23, Foreign Minister Wopke Hoekstra said. Half left on four Dutch evacuation flights to Jordan, which also carried about 70 people from 14 other countries.

The Netherlands aims to evacuate a total of around 150 Dutch nationals and has supplied two military planes to the international effort, which are also available for other nationalities.

SWITZERLAND

Switzerland has shut its embassy and evacuated all Swiss staff and their families.

UNITED ARAB EMIRATES

The United Arab Emirates evacuated its citizens, other nationalities and humanitarian cases from Sudan by plane on Saturday. Around 128 evacuees, including British and U.S. citizens, landed in the capital Abu Dhabi.

RUSSIA

Russia has not yet announced any evacuation of its embassy or its nationals from Khartoum. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the Russians in Sudan were in close contact with Moscow.

JAPAN

All Japanese people who wished to leave have been evacuated, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said.

INDONESIA

A further 363 Indonesian citizens evacuated from Sudan arrived home on Sunday on a second flight by the country’s flag carrier Garuda Indonesia, the country’s foreign ministry said.

A first group of Indonesian evacuees arrived back in the country on Friday, and a total of 748 citizens have been evacuated from Sudan as of Sunday.

CHINA

China said most Chinese nationals have been safely evacuated in groups to neighbouring countries. The defence ministry deployed naval ships to pick up and evacuate citizens on Wednesday.

The foreign ministry said between Tuesday and Thursday, nearly 800 people were transferred by sea and more than 300 travelled to neighbouring countries by land.

The Chinese consulate-general in Jeddah issued a notice on Wednesday advising citizens who planned to evacuate to Saudi Arabia to enter through the Jeddah Islamic Port.

INDIA

More than 1,200 Indians evacuated from Sudan had arrived in Jeddah in Saudi Arabia as of Thursday, and would soon be repatriated to India, the country’s junior foreign minister V. Muraleedharan said.

CANADA

Canada conducted its first evacuation operation in Sudan on Thursday, airlifting over 100 people, including Canadians and other nationals, on two flights from the war-torn North African country, senior government officials said.

Canada would deploy about 200 troops to coordinate evacuations from war-torn Sudan, Canadian Defence Minister Anita Anand said on Wednesday. About 180 Canadians had already been evacuated with the help of other countries.

There are about 1,800 Canadians in Sudan, out of which about 700 have requested assistance from the foreign ministry, according to the Canadian government.

CHAD

Chad conducted its first evacuation flights from Sudan carrying more than 200 people, including dozens of children, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said on Friday.

UKRAINE

Ukraine said it had rescued 87 of its citizens - most of them pilots, aircraft technicians and their families - among a total of 138 civilians, who also included citizens of Georgia and Peru.

KENYA

Kenya’s foreign affairs ministry said on Thursday the government had evacuated 342 people who arrived in Jeddah in Saudi Arabia from Port Sudan.

IRAN

Iran’s foreign ministry said on Saturday 65 Iranian citizens had left from Port Sudan, through Jeddah, to Iran.

An aircraft carrying eight tons of emergency medical aid landed Sunday in Sudan to resupply hospitals devastated by more than two weeks of fighting between forces loyal to rival generals.

The supplies are enough to treat hundreds of wounded, as the civilian death toll from the countrywide violence topped 400. The conflict erupted on April 15 between the nation’s army and its paramilitary force, and threatens to thrust Sudan into a raging civil war.

More than two-thirds of hospitals in areas with active fighting are out of service, a national doctors’ association has said, citing a shortage of medical supplies, health workers, water and electricity.

On Sunday, the aircraft carrying medical aid took off from Jordan and landed in the city of Port Sudan, said the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The supplies, including anesthetics, dressings, sutures and other surgical material, are enough to treat more than 1,000 people wounded in the conflict, the ICRC said.

“The hope is to get this material to some of the most critically busy hospitals in the capital” of Khartoum and other hot spots, said Patrick Youssef, ICRC’s regional director for Africa.

The Sudan Doctors’ Syndicate, which monitors casualties, said Sunday that over the past two weeks, 425 civilians were killed and 2,091 wounded. The Sudanese Health Ministry on Saturday put the overall death toll, including fighters, at 528, with 4,500 wounded.

Some of the deadliest battles have raged across Khartoum. The fighting pits the army chief, Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan, against Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, the head of a paramilitary group known as the Rapid Support Forces.

The generals, both with powerful foreign backers, were allies in an October 2021 military coup that halted Sudan‘s fitful transition to democracy, but they have since turned on each other.

Ordinary Sudanese have been caught in the crossfire. Tens of thousands have fled to neighboring countries, including Chad and Egypt, while others remain pinned down with dwindling supplies. Thousands of foreigners have been evacuated in airlifts and land convoys.

On Sunday, fighting continued in different parts of the capital where residents hiding in their homes reported hearing artillery fire. There have been lulls in fighting, but never a fully observed cease-fire, despite repeated attempts by international mediators.

Over the weekend, residents reported that shops were reopening and normalcy gradually returning in some areas of Khartoum as the scale of fighting dwindled after yet another shaky truce. But in other areas, terrified residents reported explosions thundering around them and fighters ransacking houses.

Youssef, the ICRC official, said the agency has been in contact with the top command of both sides to ensure that medical assistance could reach hospitals safely.

“With this news today, we are really hoping that this becomes part of a steady coordination mechanism to allow other flights to come in,” he said.

Youssef said more medical aid was ready to be flown into Khartoum pending necessary clearances and security guarantees.