James Cleverly urges British nationals still wanting to leave the war-torn nation to make their way to Port Sudan
The final UK evacuation flight is expected to take off from Sudan on Wednesday, the foreign secretary has announced.
James Cleverly urged British nationals still wanting to leave the war-torn nation to make their way to Port Sudan.
Continue reading...Several people killed outside East Nile hospital as civilian groups step in to help people caught in conflict
Fierce street fighting, including the use of heavy weaponry and artillery fire, has consumed central Khartoum as worsening violence tests a deteriorating ceasefire.
Volleys of airstrikes and sounds of gunfire were audible in Khartoum’s twin city, Omdurman, overnight as clashes raged throughout the capital, and were particularly heavy in areas around major government and military infrastructure in the city centre.
Continue reading...Long dispute creates unwanted uncertainties as increased migration and outside actors enter the conflict
Fears remain that Sudan – riven by fighting between the Sudanese army and its paramilitary rival, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) – could plunge into a protracted crisis, prompting a humanitarian disaster with broad geopolitical implications.
A string of failed or divided states already exist on Europe’s peripheries, a crescent of instability that stretches from the African Sahel, Libya, through to Yemen, Syria, and north into Ukraine, three countries where extended wars have been raging.
Continue reading...Critical shortages of basic goods including water, and bodies piling in streets creating ‘environmental catastrophe’
Sudanese medics have described seeing piles of bodies in the streets of the capital, Khartoum, people drinking polluted water, and doctors working under bombardments as the battle between the country’s two warring generals continues despite a threadbare ceasefire.
Intense explosions and shelling were audible in Omdurman, Khartoum’s twin city across the Nile, on Monday and there were reports of further explosions and clashes in the Bahri and Kafouri districts of Khartoum North. In the south of Khartoum, residents reported that the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) fired anti-aircraft missiles in response to bombardments by the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF).
Continue reading...Unclear whether all British evacuees will be able to reach Port Sudan, more than 500 miles from Khartoum
British forces will oversee an additional evacuation flight out of Sudan as fighting continues to rage in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum.
British passport holders, as well as doctors with leave to remain in the UK and their dependents, were told to arrive at Port Sudan international airport on the Red Sea coast before midday local time (11am BST).
Continue reading...New UN envoy to the region warns that humanitarian situation is ‘reaching breaking point’
Sudan’s rival military forces have accused each other of violating a fresh ceasefire as the deadly conflict rumbles on for a third week despite warnings of a slide towards civil war.
Both sides said a formal ceasefire agreement that was due to expire at midnight would be extended for a further 72 hours. The army said it hoped what it called the “rebels” would abide by the deal but it believed they had intended to keep up attacks. The parties have kept fighting through a series of ceasefires over the past week.
Continue reading...FCDO asks any British nationals hoping to leave war-torn country to reach airport in Port Sudan by noon local time on Monday
The UK government has announced plans to carry out an additional evacuation flight from Sudan on Monday, after previously suggesting that efforts to bring British nationals out of the war-torn country had concluded.
In a statement on Sunday, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) urged any UK nationals still hoping to leave Sudan to make their way to the airport in Port Sudan, on the Red Sea coast, by noon local time (11am BST) on 1 May.
Continue reading...UN refugee agency ‘extremely concerned’ about effect on ‘fragile’ region, as evidence emerges of widespread destruction
Fighting has erupted in Sudan’s Darfur region – including the use of heavy weaponry, and attacks on civilians and essential healthcare infrastructure – escalating a crisis now in its third week that was sparked by two rival generals.
Across the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, the sound of gunfire echoed through the streets throughout Sunday and airstrikes hit its twin city Omdurman.
Continue reading...Abdalla Hamdok, who resigned in January last year, says conflict could spiral into bigger crisis than Syria, Yemen or Libya
Sudan’s former prime minister Abdalla Hamdok has warned that the conflict in the turbulent African nation could deteriorate to one of the world’s worst civil wars if it is not stopped early.
More than 500 people have been killed since battles erupted on 15 April between the forces of army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his number two Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, commonly known as Hemedti, who commands the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
Continue reading...Sarra Eljak and Mustafa Abbas missed the last flight as 220km trip to airbase was too dangerous for their children
A couple who both work for the NHS missed the last UK evacuation flight out of Sudan on Saturday, believing the journey to be “too dangerous”.
The doctors must now find an alternative means of fleeing the war-torn country.
Continue reading...Nearly 1,900 have been evacuated, says UK government, but final flight has yet to leave Khartoum
Britons are feared to have been stranded in Sudan following reports that the country’s armed forces had prevented a number of people from reaching the last rescue flights out of the war-torn country on Saturday.
On Saturday night, it was announced that 1,888 people on 21 flights have been evacuated from Sudan – the vast majority of them British nationals and their dependents – but the last flight was yet to leave despite being scheduled to depart at 6pm.
Continue reading...People fleeing fighting in Khartoum left waiting for days at sparsely staffed crossing after costly and dangerous journeys
Thousands of people have fled fierce street battles in central Khartoum for Sudan’s borders, waiting for days in the open air to enter Egypt or walking hundreds of miles to cross into South Sudan.
Rana Ameen, a 23-year-old engineering student, said she and five members of her family had paid the equivalent of £475 per person to travel to the border crossing with Egypt, almost 600 miles (1,000km) away.
Continue reading...Hundreds of people were told to make own way through ongoing fighting to airbase north of Khartoum
NHS doctors and British nationals faced a treacherous route to reach an airbase north of Khartoum before a deadline for evacuations, amid ongoing airstrikes and artillery fire in the Sudanese capital.
Hundreds of people were told to find their own way to an evacuation centre at the Wadi Seidna airbase, about 14 miles (20km) north of Khartoum and its twin city, Omdurman. They had to navigate ongoing fighting as the Sudanese Armed Forces continued to attack positions across the two cities, while members of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces hid among civilian buildings.
Continue reading...Deputy PM to chair Cobra meeting on security situation in Khartoum as UK government prepares to end flights
The deadline for British nationals to reach the evacuation airfield in Sudan has passed as the government prepares to cease flights out of the country within hours.
The deputy prime minister, Oliver Dowden, will chair a Cobra meeting on Saturday afternoon to discuss the security situation in Khartoum in advance of the final flight taking off at 6pm UK time.
Continue reading...Government announces end to airlifts amid calls for NHS doctors without UK passports to be rescued
British nationals trapped in Sudan have until midday on Saturday local time to get on a flight before they stop, ministers have announced, as a doctors’ union called for NHS medics without UK passports to also be airlifted.
Oliver Dowden, the deputy prime minister, said on Friday night more than 1,500 people had been flown out, and there had been a “significant decline in British nationals coming forward”, meaning it was time to end the operation.
Continue reading...Concerns truce agreement may not hold despite three-day extension as unrest continues
Street battles and gunfire threaten what remains of a fragile ceasefire in Sudan, now hanging by a thread despite a three-day extension of the truce agreement, as a Turkish evacuation plane was shot at as it attempted to land.
The Sudanese Armed Forces, loyal to Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and its rival, the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group, traded blame for the incident at the Wadi Seidna airbase, 12.5 miles (20km) north of Khartoum on the western bank of the Nile
Continue reading...At Omdurman’s open-air market, half of the stalls are shut, customers are scarce and money is tight
“I haven’t sold anything since 6am today,” said Adam Musa, a vegetable seller at Omdurman’s open-air market, as fighting between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces raged a few miles away. “There are no people buying.”
Musa, 55, faced two problems: a lack of customers, and an inability on the part of those who did come to pay what he was charging.
Continue reading...Family have been waiting more than 12 months for documents and are now trapped amid violence in Khartoum
The Home Office has been accused of putting the lives of a heavily pregnant woman and her three-year-old daughter at risk as they remain stranded in Sudan while waiting for a UK visa.
The family have been waiting more than a year for their documents to be issued, with the mother, who is almost nine months pregnant, trying to shield her daughter from the violence on the streets of Khartoum, the capital.
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The US embassy in Khartoum has overnight reminded US citizens in Sudan to register in order to be informed of opportunities to evacuate when they arise. The US has previously evacuated its diplomatic staff from the country.
The Sky News Middle East correspondent Alistair Bunkall has reported from Larnaca airport that the extended 72-hour ceasefire gives international partners a chance to press for a longer-lasting peace, and that the emphasis on aid efforts might switch from getting people out of Sudan to getting supplies in. He told viewers:
I think, as many people predicted, it went quite close to the line before both sides came to an agreement that there should be a lull, or at least a lull of sorts, in the fighting. So that is good news.
Now what needs to happen is that the evacuation flights need to continue apace to get as many people out as possible. But also, I think what you’ll find, is that the foreign diplomatic community tries to bring together the two factions, in order to find something more long lasting and stable, rather than these sort of multiple iterations of 72 hours that have got people living on edge.
Continue reading...Army and RSF agree to extend truce but violence means no respite for exhausted civilians
Rival factions in Sudan agreed on Thursday night to extend a ceasefire despite reports of surging fighting across the country that many fear suggests intense violence in the days to come.
A 72-hour truce from Monday night had initially brought relative calm to Khartoum, Sudan’s capital, and so facilitated the evacuation of thousands of foreign nationals in recent days. But fighting between the Sudanese army and its paramilitary rival, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), escalated through Thursday in the city and its environs, as well as in the country’s restive south-west.
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