The US military led the first effort to evacuate American citizens from Sudan on Friday as a convoy of buses left the embattled capital Khartoum for Port Sudan on the Red Sea.
Weeks of vicious fighting between two entrenched military generals in that country have forced foreign governments to scramble to extricate their employees and citizens; approximately 100 US embassy personnel and a few foreign officials were evacuated in a mission early in the conflict that involved the US military and included three MH-47 Chinook transport helicopters. But as many as 16,000 Americans not employed by the government remained in Sudan, without an exit plan — only suggestions from US officials on overland evacuation routes.
Initially the embassy in Khartoum announced that there would be no formal evacuation of US citizens, drawing critical comparisons to other countries’ active withdrawal of their own nationals. The US convoy, which was monitored by armed American drones and brought 300 people safely to the port on Saturday, happened as many other countries are winding down evacuations of their citizens.
The conflict began in the early hours of Saturday, April 15, between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), the country’s military, run by Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a government paramilitary organization controlled by Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, commonly called Hemedti. Hostilities arose after an agreement between the two sides to negotiate a transition from military to civilian-led government and a timetable for integration of the RSF into the regular army fizzled amid rising tensions between the two sides.
Following weeks of failed attempts to mediate a ceasefire by numerous countries, the African Union, and the UN, at least 512 people have been killed and more than 4,000 have been injured in the conflict, according to the World Health Organization.
Meanwhile, Ravina Shamdasani, a spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for…
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