Evacuation successful
US evicts embassy staff from Sudan
4/23/2023 4:52 am
A week after heavy fighting broke out in Sudan, the US managed to evacuate its diplomatic staff. The RSF militia also wants to enable other countries to bring their citizens to safety. The crisis team meets at the Federal Foreign Office.
The US has apparently begun evacuating its embassy staff from Sudan. All US diplomats and their family members are on their way out of the country in military aircraft, reports the US broadcaster CNN, citing a government official. The US embassy in the Sudanese capital Khartoum was closed with the evacuation.
The paramilitary RSF militia says it has coordinated with the US military to facilitate the evacuation. The RSF militia said on Twitter that six US military planes had taken the diplomats and their families out of the country. The RSF agreed to work with other missions abroad to enable foreigners to “safely return to their countries.” The militia had previously agreed to “partially” open “all airports” in Sudan to evacuate foreigners. However, it is currently not possible to verify which airports are controlled by the RSF militia and which by the army.
For days, the US military had been preparing with other Western countries for the evacuation of their own citizens. Additional armed forces were transferred to countries neighboring Sudan. Heavy fighting in and around the embattled airport in Khartoum had so far prevented foreigners from being flown out of the north-east African country. The US government had previously made it clear that Americans who were not in Sudan as diplomats or embassy staff could not expect to be taken out of the country.
150 foreigners flee by ship
The first foreigners were taken out of the country on Saturday. A ship carrying more than 150 people from different countries arrived in the port city of Jeddah in Saudi Arabia. In addition to 91 Saudi Arabians, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Riyadh, people from Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Tunisia, Pakistan, India, Bulgaria, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Canada and Burkina Faso were on board. Other countries are also trying to evacuate their citizens.
The crisis team met at the Foreign Office in Berlin on Saturday. A spokeswoman said a “low three-digit number” of German citizens had asked for an evacuation from Sudan. 118 people work in Sudan for the federally owned German development company GIZ alone, including 103 employees from Germany. Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock announced on Friday that several options for the evacuation were being examined.