Diplomats and citizens airlifted from Sudan as fighting gets intense

Africa, News April 24, 2023 , by IRIA No Comments

The U.S., UK, Germany, France, Italy, and China among several other countries conduct swift airlift operations in Sudan to evacuate their diplomats and citizens from the battle-affected areas.

Sudan’s military and the country’s powerful paramilitary force engaged in intense fights in Sudan, turning into a full-fledged civil war.

The U.S. and British forces announced on April 23, 2022, that they had flown their diplomats and citizens out of Sudan through airlift operations. The U.S. authorities said that some 100 people, mostly diplomats and their families, were airlifted from the Sudanese capital to an undisclosed location in Ethiopia by the U.S. special forces in three Chinook helicopters. Ethiopian authorities provided overflight refueling assistance to the U.S. special forces during the operation.

Thousands of private U.S. citizens are still present in the battle-torn country. U.S. President Joe Biden released a statement regarding the situation saying that his team is working “to the extent possible” to assist the remaining American citizens to evacuate from Sudan.

British Foreign Minister James Cleverly announced that British diplomats and their families had been evacuated from Sudan in a “complex and rapid” operation. He said that there were “specific threats and violence directed towards diplomats” which led to the decision to evacuate staff.

He also announced that the British embassy to Sudan would be relocated to a nearby country until the situation comes to rest in Khartoum. Cleverly urged all British citizens present in Sudan to leave the country and advised them to stay in touch with the foreign ministry’s hotline that has been set up for those who need urgent help.

^{Smoke rises in Omdurman, near Halfaya Bridge, during clashes between the Paramilitary Rapid Support Forces and the army as seen from Khartoum North, Sudan, on April 15, 2023. (Image Credit: Reuters/Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah)}

France has evacuated more than 100 people through an airlift operation, while Germany, Netherlands, and Italy are also conducting airlift operations to evacuate their diplomats and citizens. Citizens from Pakistan, Egypt, and Canada were also evacuated by sea to the Saudi Arabian port of Jeddah.

Internet outage

A near-total collapse of the internet has been reported in Sudan as the critical infrastructure is being targeted by both sides to cut communication channels. According to an independent internet monitoring service, only 2% of the total population in Sudan has access to the internet at the moment.

Crisis

The power struggle between the two-armed institution turned into a deadly civil war in Khartoum and other major cities on April 15, 2023. The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Force (RSF) in the race to seize power.

The current crisis in Sudan can be dated back to 2019, when RSF, with the help of the army, overthrew Omar al-Bashir’s government after a series of nationwide protests. Soon after the coup, RSF started stationing itself in the country’s capital despite assuring democratic elections to the political factions of the country. Eventually, the two main actors of the 2019 coup, the army, and the RSF, turned on each other to capture power.

*^{Abdel Fattah al-Burhan (right), the head of Sudan’s transitional governing Sovereign Council, and paramilitary RSF head Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo. (Image Credit: AFP/Twitter/via TWI)}*

At the heart of the tensions is a dispute over the integration of the paramilitary force, led by General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, into the armed forces, which is being spearheaded by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan’s military.