Scramble for evacuation as Sudan battle rages on

Khartoum, April 23

Foreign governments evacuated diplomats, staff and others trapped in Sudan on Sunday as rival generals battled for a ninth day with no sign of a truce that had been declared for a major Muslim holiday.

While world powers like the US and Britain airlifted their diplomats from the capital of Khartoum, Sudanese desperately sought to flee the chaos.

Many risked dangerous roads to seek safer spots or crossed the northern frontier into Egypt. “My family — my mother, my siblings and my nephews — are on the road from Sudan to Cairo through Aswan,” prominent Sudanese filmmaker Amjad Abual-Ala wrote on Facebook.

Fighting raged in Omdurman, a city across the Nile from Khartoum, residents said, despite a hoped-for cease-fire to coincide with the three-day Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr.

“We did not see such a truce,” Amin al-Tayed said from his home near state TV headquarters in Omdurman, adding that heavy gunfire and thundering explosions rocked the city.

More than 420 people, including 264 civilians, have been killed and more than 3,700 have been wounded in the fighting between the Sudanese armed forces and the powerful paramilitary group known as the Rapid Support Forces, or RSF. — AP

Pro-active steps by many nations

• US evacuated all its personnel and their dependents, along with a few diplomats from other countries
• UK PM Rishi Sunak said the country’s forces evacuated diplomatic staff and their family members
• Saudi Arabia pulled 91 Saudis and about 66 people from other countries out from Port Sudan
• Dutch Foreign Minister Wopke Hoekstra said a first group of Dutch citizens has been evacuated