Foreign nationals are being evacuated from Sudan as deadly fighting between forces loyal to two rival generals continues into a second week. Gunfire can be heard in the capital, Khartoum, and fighter jets are flying overhead. The United Nations is also evacuating foreigners in a long convoy. Meanwhile, millions of residents are hunkering down inside their homes, many running low on food and water. Army and paramilitary troops have been fighting ferocious street battles since April 15, leaving behind charred tanks, gutted buildings, and looted and torched shops. More than 420 people have been killed, and thousands have been wounded.
US special forces have launched a rescue mission for around 100 embassy staff and their relatives. US President Joe Biden condemned the violence, while British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said UK forces had also evacuated diplomats and their families. Germany and France have also begun evacuating their nationals and those from other countries. Long convoys of UN vehicles and buses have been seen leaving Khartoum heading east to Port Sudan on the Red Sea, carrying “citizens from all over the world”.
The fighting broke out on April 15 between forces loyal to army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his deputy turned rival Mohamed Hamdan Daglo. Daglo’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) emerged from the Janjaweed fighters whom former strongman Omar al-Bashir unleashed in the Darfur region, where they were accused of war crimes including genocide. The military toppled Bashir in April 2019 following mass citizen protests. The two generals seized power in a 2021 coup but later fell out in a bitter power struggle, most recently centred on the planned integration of the RSF into the regular army.
Multiple truces have been agreed upon in recent days and ignored. Khartoum’s airport, where the blackened hulls of destroyed aircraft lie on runways, is under the control of the RSF. At least one jailbreak has taken place in the capital, and reports of prisoners being freed from two other prisons, including the Kober jail where Bashir has been held, could not be independently verified.
Pope Francis has called for an end to the violence and for dialogue to resume. Fighting has also broken out elsewhere across Sudan, Africa’s third biggest nation. Battles have raged in Darfur, where aid group Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said their medics had been “overwhelmed” by the number of patients with gunshot wounds, many of them children, in the city of El Fasher. Some hospitals have been shelled and others ransacked, with more than two-thirds of hospitals in Khartoum and neighbouring states “out of service”, the doctors’ union said.
Foreign nationals are being evacuated from Sudan as deadly fighting between forces loyal to two rival generals continues into a second week. Gunfire can be heard in the capital, Khartoum, and fighter jets are flying overhead. The United Nations is also evacuating foreigners in a long convoy. Meanwhile, millions of residents are hunkering down inside their homes, many running low on food and water.
Army and paramilitary troops have been fighting ferocious street battles since April 15, leaving behind charred tanks, gutted buildings, and looted and torched shops. More than 420 people have been killed, and thousands have been wounded.
US special forces have launched a rescue mission for around 100 embassy staff and their relatives. US President Joe Biden condemned the violence, while British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said UK forces had also evacuated diplomats and their families. Germany and France have also begun evacuating their nationals and those from other countries.
Long convoys of UN vehicles and buses have been seen leaving Khartoum heading east to Port Sudan on the Red Sea, carrying “citizens from all over the world”. The fighting broke out on April 15 between forces loyal to army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his deputy turned rival Mohamed Hamdan Daglo.
Daglo’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) emerged from the Janjaweed fighters whom former strongman Omar al-Bashir unleashed in the Darfur region, where they were accused of war crimes including genocide. The military toppled Bashir in April 2019 following mass citizen protests. The two generals seized power in a 2021 coup but later fell out in a bitter power struggle, most recently centred on the planned integration of the RSF into the regular army.
Multiple truces have been agreed upon in recent days and ignored. Khartoum’s airport, where the blackened hulls of destroyed aircraft lie on runways, is under the control of the RSF. At least one jailbreak has taken place in the capital, and reports of prisoners being freed from two other prisons, including the Kober jail where Bashir has been held, could not be independently verified.
Pope Francis has called for an end to the violence and for dialogue to resume. Fighting has also broken out elsewhere across Sudan, Africa’s third biggest nation. Battles have raged in Darfur, where aid group Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said their medics had been “overwhelmed” by the number of patients with gunshot wounds, many of them children, in the city of El Fasher. Some hospitals have been shelled and others ransacked, with more than two-thirds of hospitals in Khartoum and neighbouring states “out of service”, the doctors’ union said.
