Federal Foreign Office wants to find solution for people stuck in Sudan

Status: 03.05.2023 18:03

There are probably still hundreds of passports in the evacuated German embassy in Khartoum. The Federal Foreign Office now wants to find a solution for the people who are currently without passports. But nobody should be put in danger, it said.

A number of people are stuck in Sudan whose passports were left behind after the German embassy was evacuated. The federal government now wants to work on their behalf. The evacuation operation in Khartoum took place “under very difficult circumstances,” said Christian Wagner, spokesman for the Federal Foreign Office.

There are probably still a three-digit number of passports in the German embassy. These were mainly submitted there as part of visa procedures. An issue was no longer possible due to the escalating fighting and the evacuation of the embassy staff. The situation was “extremely confusing and dangerous,” said Wagner.

The Bundeswehr has already flown around 500 people out of Sudan with an evacuation mission.
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“Find a solution to this situation”

The Federal Foreign Office is now working with the embassy staff who have been brought to safety and the local staff who are still in Sudan to “find a solution to this situation”. But nobody should be put in danger.

The “Süddeutsche Zeitung” reported earlier this week that there may be thousands of Sudanese whose passports are in the now-closed embassies of European countries in Khartoum.

Still Germans in Sudan

For more than two weeks, de facto President Abdel Fattah al-Burhan has been using the armed forces to wage a power struggle in Sudan against his deputy, Mohammed Hamdan Daglo, who heads the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

Germany and numerous other countries brought their citizens to safety by plane after the escalation of violence the weekend before last. According to the Bundeswehr, around 780 people from more than 40 nations flew out, including 230 Germans. According to ministry spokesman Wagner, the Federal Foreign Office assumes that there are still a double-digit number of German citizens in Sudan. However, not all of them want to leave the country.

Who is fighting in Sudan and what are the consequences of the escalation? The most important questions at a glance.
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Seven-day ceasefire

Meanwhile, leaders of the Sudanese army and rival paramilitaries agreed to a seven-day ceasefire from May 4-11. This was announced by the Foreign Ministry of the neighboring country of South Sudan. The President of South Sudan, Salva Kiir, has been mediating between the two parties to the conflict for a few days as a representative of the Northeast African regional association IGAD.

Since the beginning of the bloody conflict, ceasefires of up to 72 hours have been negotiated, but have repeatedly been broken. A real ceasefire was not actually observed by either side.

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