2023-04-23 12:14:27
KHARTOUM (Reuters) – The United States evacuated its diplomats from Sudan and France and other European countries on Sunday began a rapid evacuation operation of their nationals from the country, where fighting between the regular army and paramilitaries Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have been raging for eight days.
The belligerents mutually accused each other of having attacked a convoy of French nationals, each reporting one French wounded. The Quai d’Orsay, which announced Sunday morning that France was coordinating an evacuation operation, did not comment on this information immediately.
The Sudanese army also accused the RSF of attacking and looting a Qatari convoy heading for Port Sudan on the Red Sea. Doha did not react immediately.
Egypt said a member of its mission in Sudan was shot and wounded, without giving further details.
US President Joe Biden announced on Saturday that Washington had evacuated its diplomatic staff and was suspending operations at its embassy.
“The belligerents must implement an immediate and unconditional ceasefire, allow unhindered humanitarian access and respect the will of the Sudanese people,” Joe Biden said in a statement.
“The tragic violence in Sudan has already claimed the lives of hundreds of innocent civilians,” added the White House chief. “This is unacceptable and must stop.”
In a press release issued on Sunday morning, the French ministries of Foreign Affairs and the Armed Forces announced that France was coordinating a rapid evacuation operation for its diplomatic personnel and its nationals.
This operation, which is being carried out in conjunction with all the stakeholders as well as the European partners and allies of France, includes EU nationals as well as European diplomatic staff, they specified.
Clashes between the Sudanese regular army led by General Abdel Fattah el Bourhan and the FSR of General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as “Hemedti”, broke out on April 15 in Khartoum and the rest of the country, causing more of 400 dead.
The two forces, allied during the military coup carried out in 2021, two years after the fall of autocrat Omar el Bashir, failed to reach an agreement during negotiations on the integration of the FSR within the regular army.
Several ceasefires announced in recent days have not been respected.
CHAOS
Columns of thick smoke continued to obscure the skies of Khartoum and the neighboring towns of Ombdurman and Bahri on Sunday and gunfire could be heard in several neighborhoods, according to a Reuters journalist present in the Sudanese capital.
Intense fighting continues around the army headquarters in central Khartoum as well as at the airport, which was closed due to the clashes, and in Bahri, where the army is using airstrikes and troops in ground in an attempt to repel the FSRs.
The paramilitary group said on Sunday that its forces had been the target of airstrikes in the Kafouri district of Bahri, speaking of dozens of dead and wounded.
The chaotic situation forces many residents of Khartoum to remain confined to their homes due to the bombardments and the presence of armed men in the streets.
To evacuate their diplomatic personnel, the United States mobilized special forces on Saturday on board MH-47 Chinook helicopters from an American base in Djibouti, which spent barely an hour in Khartoum and recovered a few hundred people. .
“We were able to arrive and depart without a problem,” said General Douglas Sims, director of operations at the general staff.
John Bass, Under Secretary for Administration at the State Department, said foreign nationals including Americans had also managed to leave Khartoum to reach Port Sudan by road.
Saudi Arabia has already evacuated nationals of Gulf countries from the main Sudanese port, located 650 km northeast of Khartoum. Jordan also uses this route for its nationals.
Egypt has ordered its nationals living outside Khartoum to join the consulate in Port Sudan or a consular office in Wadi Halfa, on the border with Egypt, to prepare for their evacuation.
She urged those residing in the capital to take shelter until the situation improves. Egypt has some 10,000 nationals in Sudan.
Outside Khartoum, there are reports of heavy fighting in Darfur, a vast western region where conflict that erupted in 2003 left 300,000 dead and 2.7 million displaced.
(Report Khalid Abdelaziz in Khartoum, with Ahmed Elimam and Hatem Maher in Cairo, Daphne Psaledakis, Juliette Jabkhiro in Paris and Phil Stewart in Washington; written by Aidan Lewis, French version Camille Raynaud and Jean-Stéphane Brosse)
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