Khartoum, Sudan
Fleeing Sudan: The United States, the United Kingdom, France, and several other countries airlifted more than 1,000 of their diplomats and other citizens out of Sudan this week, taking advantage of a three-day ceasefire between forces loyal to two rival generals. Just before the brief truce, American special operations forces rescued about 90 stranded staff members from the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum, flying them in three MH-47 Chinook helicopters to neighboring Djibouti, where the U.S. has a military base. The U.S., which along with Saudi Arabia brokered the cease-fire, is pushing for negotiations to permanently end the fighting that erupted on April 15 between army forces led by Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, Sudan’s de facto leader, and paramilitary forces led by his former deputy, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti.
Tens of thousands of Sudanese had already sought refuge in neighboring countries, and more fled this week. The price of tickets to the Egyptian border and the ports shot up 10-fold, and many families had to camp in the open desert when they reached clogged border crossings. Meanwhile, the whereabouts of former dictator Omar al-Bashir were unclear. Deposed in 2019, al-Bashir has been indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court, and he and several associates were being held in a Khartoum prison. But one of those associates, Ahmad Muhammad Harun, said in an audio clip shared widely this week that he and other inmates had left the prison for safety reasons. Each of the warring sides accused the other of purposely releasing Harun, and Hemedti’s group said the army was trying to “restore the deposed regime.”