Foreigners airlifted out; Sudanese seek refuge
KHARTOUM, Sudan — As foreign governments airlifted hundreds of their diplomats and other citizens to safety, Sudanese on Monday desperately sought ways to escape the chaos, fearing that the country’s two rival generals will escalate their allout battle for power once evacuations are completed.
In dramatic evacuation operations, convoys of foreign diplomats, civilian teachers, students, workers and families from dozens of countries wound past combatants at tense front lines in the capital of Khartoum to reach extraction points. Others drove hundreds of miles to the country’s east coast. A stream of European, Mideast, African and Asian military aircraft flew in all day Sunday and Monday to ferry them out.
But for many Sudanese, the airlift was a terrifying sign that international powers, after failing repeatedly to broker cease-fires, only expect a worsening of the fighting that has already pushed the population into disaster.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he had helped broker a 72-hour cease-fire to begin late Monday.
It would extend a nominal truce coinciding with a Muslim holiday that brought almost no reduction in fighting but helped to facilitate the evacuations.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned of a “catastrophic conflagration” that could engulf the whole region. He urged the 15 members of the Security Council to “exert maximum leverage” on both sides in order to “pull Sudan back from the edge of the abyss.”
Sudanese face a harrowing search for safety in the constantly shifting battle of explosions, gunfire and armed fighters looting shops and homes. Many have been huddling in their homes for nine days. Food and fuel are leaping in price and harder to find, electricity and Internet are cut off in much of the country, and hospitals are near collapse.
Those who can afford it were making the 15-hour long drive to the Egyptian border or to Port Sudan on the Red Sea coast. Those without means to get abroad streamed out to relatively calmer provinces along the Nile north and south of Khartoum. Many more were trapped, with cash in short supply and transport costs spiraling.
“Traveling out of Khartoum has become a luxury,” said Shahin al-Sherif, a high school teacher.