Fighting in Sudan: parties to the conflict want to facilitate evacuations

The opponents of the conflict in Sudan have announced that they will allow foreign diplomats and citizens to leave the country safely. The first countries have apparently already started evacuations, and a federal government crisis team met in Berlin.

Amid ongoing fighting in Sudan, the two conflict opponents have signaled that they want to allow evacuations of foreign nationals. According to the military, army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan pledged his support for a safe exit.

Burhan’s rival, the head of the paramilitary RSF militia, General Mohammed Hamdan Daglo, also spoke out in favor of allowing evacuations and keeping some of the airports open for this purpose. However, the international airport in the capital Khartoum is always the scene of battles – the situation at other airports is unclear.

First evacuations have begun

According to the Sudanese army, the Saudi Arabian embassy has already been evacuated. Jordan will follow suit soon. The United States, Britain, France and China would begin evacuations from the capital “in the coming hours,” according to Reuters news agency.

The US State Department has confirmed the death of a US citizen in Sudan. Due to the tense situation, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said at a press conference at the US Ramstein Airbase late Friday afternoon that preparations were being made for various evacuation options: “We have sent some troops to the country to ensure that we can have as many options as possible if we are called upon to act.”

Germany wants to start a new evacuation attempt

The federal government is also preparing several options for evacuations – the crisis team at the Federal Foreign Office met. As his spokesman announced, the meeting took place under the joint leadership of Federal Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock and Federal Defense Minister Boris Pistorius. The spokesman, like his colleagues from the Defense Ministry, did not provide any information about a possibly imminent evacuation of German citizens.

Yesterday, the Foreign Minister spoke of an “absolutely dramatic and confusing situation” in the north-east African country. The number of Germans who reported a desired evacuation is growing daily and is currently in the “lower three-digit range”.

A spokesman for the Federal Foreign Office said that power outages are now also becoming an increasing problem, as a result of which the evacuees can no longer charge their mobile phones and therefore may soon no longer be able to be informed in this way. On Wednesday, an attempt at a diplomatic evacuation using Luftwaffe aircraft, but without any major deployment of soldiers, was aborted.

More than 410 dead so far

Even a week after fighting broke out between rival military blocs in Sudan, there is no solution to the conflict in sight. Despite the celebrations marking the end of Ramadan, the parties to the conflict did not rest their arms. Both sides had protested that they wanted to respect a ceasefire.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), at least 413 people have lost their lives and more than 3,500 have been injured since the fighting began.