2023-04-24 15:47:27
The military plane landed at the Torrejón de Ardoz base with 72 people, 34 of them of Spanish nationality, and the rest are European and Latin American.
A group of 72 Spaniards, Latin Americans and Europeans evacuated from Sudan in a Spanish military operation arrived this Monday morning at an air base near Madrid, the government reported.
The military plane that landed at the Torrejón de Ardoz base It had “72 people, 34 Spaniards, and other people of 11 nationalities, mainly European and Latin American,” said the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, at the foot of the track, in a video released by his ministry.
“It is a happy moment, a moment of relief because we have been able to successfully complete the evacuation,” he added.
Initially, there were a hundred people who left Khartoum, but some stayed in Djibouti, where the flight stopped, Foreign sources said. The evacuation occurred without incident.
Spain thus joined other countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, France or Germany that have removed their citizens or their diplomatic personnel from Sudan, where the fighting between the army and the paramilitaries entered its second week.
Among those evacuated in the Spanish operation were Portuguese, Italian, Polish, Irish, Mexican, Venezuelan, Colombian, Argentinean and Sudanesein addition to the Spanish, detailed the Spanish ministry.
Elmita Acosta, one of the two Colombians rescued during the Spanish humanitarian operation in Sudan, He explained in an interview for Blu Radio that his sister was the other Colombian rescued, in addition to the fact that She had been living with her family in Khartoum for three years –her husband and her daughter, an Argentine national–, in the capital of the African country, where They served as missionaries for the Adventist Church.
“Since the attacks began We were unable to go out onto the streets again because the confrontations were very intense. So as a family we got trapped in our apartment, in the hallways, away from the windows to hold on, and we couldn’t go out for supplies. And that is why there are not many images of the streets, because people could not go out,” Acosta explained.
Likewise, he pointed out that the majority of Sudanese citizens, given the situation of confrontation between the Army and the paramilitary group, have sought “the way to evacuate the city, seeking to reach neighboring cities, or neighboring countries, and the capital is being practically empty”, added.
The operation was possible thanks to the cooperation between the Colombian consulate in Cairo, and the Spanish embassy in Khartoum, that “it took place without any type of incident thanks to a security device to guarantee the integrity of the transfer for the members of the convoy,” Foreign Affairs said in a statement on Sunday night.
The Spanish government had announced days ago that it was seeking to evacuate its nationals in Sudan, but that it was waiting for the safest moment to do so.
Violence in the northeast African country of some 45 million people, broke out on April 15 between the army of General Abdel Fatah al Burhan, Sudan’s de facto ruler since the 2021 coup, and his rival, General Mohamed Hamdane Daglo, leader of the Rapid Support Forces (FAR).
More than 420 people have died and 3,700 have been injured so far, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
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