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On Sunday, most of the European citizens who had requested to leave Sudan were evacuated with military operations coordinated by various European states. About 150 Italians left the country after nine days of intense clashes, thanks to two C-130 military transport planes and the intervention of some army special forces units that participated in the operation.
The evacuation was made more complex by the unusability of the international airport of Khartoum, damaged during the clashes of the last week: the flights departed from the small airport of Wadi Sednia, about 16 kilometers north of the capital: to reach it, however, the convoys escorted by the Italian military had to make a longer journey to avoid the city center, where clashes between the two warring factions are frequent.
The war in Sudan began on Saturday 15 April, with violent clashes between the regular army, commanded by the country’s president Abdel Fattah al Burhan, and a paramilitary group known as the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which is in fact a parallel army and it is commanded by Vice President Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as Hemedti. So far in the clashes between the two groups have died more than 400 people and there are thousands of injured.
In addition to Italy, France, Spain, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands also evacuated their citizens: the Spanish flights also hosted people from Ireland, Portugal, Poland, Argentina, Colombia, Mexico and Venezuela, the Italian ones some Swiss. The United States and the United Kingdom had been the first to proceed with the evacuations, initially dealing with embassy staff, followed by Canada. Jordan has also organized repatriation flights for its citizens in Sudan. About 150 people mainly from the Persian Gulf, but also from Egypt and Pakistan, had instead left the country by ship on Saturday, heading for the port of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
The arrival of Jordanian citizens at Amman airport (AP Photo/Raad Adayleh)
Instead, 38 doctors, nurses and staff of Emergency, a non-governmental organization that manages three hospitals in Sudan (Khartum, Nyala and Port Sudan), remained in Sudan: they chose to stay to continue assisting the patients housed in the facilities. Emergency evacuated only 7 people: four were part of the administrative staff, three were doctors who had arrived at the end of their period in the country but had been blocked by the war.
– Read also: The fighting in Sudan, so far
The 150 Italians will arrive in Rome today, but yesterday evening they had all landed in Djibouti, a small state in the Horn of Africa which has become the center of the international operation to rescue foreigners in Sudan: the Italians, including eight children and nine elders, were mainly diplomatic personnel, development cooperation, NGOs and entrepreneurs.
On Sunday morning, most of the Italians reached the embassy, which is located in the central districts of Khartoum and from here the convoys, escorted by military vehicles, began the complex transfer to the airport, passing through some other points of collection: a first flight with 107 Italians left in the evening, around 7 pm (it also hosted Swiss and Spanish citizens), the other 40 left a few hours later on a Spanish Air Force C-130. No incidents were reported during the transfers, while a French convoy was hit by some bullets, probably being at the center of a clash between the two factions.
French military personnel preparing a return flight (French Armed Forces via AP)
The Italian and European authorities had obtained assurances from both President al Burhan and Vice President Dagalo that the evacuation operations could be carried out in relative safety. The parties involved had hinted on Friday that they could organize a truce in the three-day clashes, but this had not held up. Many Sudanese civilians continue to be stranded in their homes, especially in the capital Khartoum where fighting is most intense.
– Read also: What is Sudan