UPDATED 6:08 A.M. 4/22/23
KHARTOUM (Reuters) – Sudan’s army said on Saturday it had agreed to help evacuate foreign nationals as sporadic gunfire and air strikes echoed across Khartoum despite promises by warring sides to cease fire for three days after a week of strife that has killed hundreds.
The statement citing army chief Abdel Fatteh al-Burhan came after promises by rival Rapid Support Forces (RSF) leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, to open airports for evacuations.
Sounds of fighting continued overnight but appeared less intense on Saturday morning than on the previous day, a Reuters journalist in Khartoum said. Live broadcasts by regional news channels showed rising smoke and the thud of blasts.
The army and the paramilitary RSF, which are waging a deadly power struggle across the country, had both issued statements saying they would uphold a three-day ceasefire from Friday for Islam’s Eid al-Fitr holiday.
Sudan’s sudden collapse into warfare has dashed plans to restore civilian rule, brought an already impoverished country to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe and threatened a wider conflict that could draw in outside powers.
There has been no sign yet that either side can secure a quick victory or is ready to back down and talk. The army has air power but the RSF is widely embedded in urban areas including around key facilities in central Khartoum.
Burhan and Hemedti had held the top two positions on a ruling council overseeing a political transition after a 2021 coup that was meant to include a move to civilian rule and the RSF’s merger into the army.
The World Health Organization reported on Friday that 413 people had been killed and 3,551 injured since fighting broke out. The death toll includes at least five aid workers in a country reliant on food aid.
International efforts to quell the violence have focused on the ceasefire, with U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken calling on them to honour the truce.
The U.S. and some other countries have readied efforts to evacuate their citizens. The army said the United States, Britain, France and China would evacuate diplomats and other nationals from Khartoum “in the coming hours”.
Saudi Arabia’s embassy had already been evacuated out by land to Port Sudan and flown out from there and Jordan’s would follow in a similar manner, the army added.
RSF chief Hemedti said on Facebook early on Saturday that he had received a phone call from U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres in which they “emphasised the necessity of adhering to a complete ceasefire and providing protection for humanitarian and medical workers”.
The RSF said it was ready to partially open all airports to allow evacuations. However, Khartoum’s international airport has been caught in fighting and the status of other airports or RSF’s control over them is unclear.
HOSPITALS HIT
In Omdurman, one of Khartoum’s adjoining sister cities, there were fears over the fate of detainees in al-Huda prison, the largest in Sudan.
The army on Friday accused the RSF of raiding the prison, which the paramilitary force denied. Lawyers for a prisoner there said in a statement that an armed group had forcibly evacuated the prison, with the detainees’ whereabouts unknown.
The Sudanese doctors union said early on Saturday that more than two thirds of hospitals in conflict areas were out of service, with 32 forcibly evacuated by soldiers or caught in crossfire.
Some of the remaining hospitals, which lack adequate water, staff and electricity, were only providing first aid. People posted urgent requests on social media for medical assistance, transport to hospital and prescription medication.
Any let-up in fighting on Saturday may accelerate a desperate rush by many Khartoum residents to flee the fighting, after spending days trapped in their homes or local districts under bombardment and with fighters roaming the streets.
Sudan borders seven countries and sits between Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia and Africa’s volatile Sahel region. The hostilities risk fanning regional tensions.
The violence was triggered by disagreement over an internationally backed plan to form a new civilian government four years after the fall of autocrat Omar al-Bashir and two years after the military coup.
Both sides accuse the other of thwarting the transition.
(Reporting by Khalid Abdelaziz in Khartoum and Nafisa Eltahir in Cairo; Writing by Angus McDowall; Editing by Frances Kerry)
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. military is preparing options to evacuate the U.S. Embassy in Sudan, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Friday as the Biden administration weighed whether to pull personnel out of the country’s increasingly unstable capital.
“We’ve deployed some forces into theater to ensure that we provide as many options as possible if we are called on to do something. And we haven’t been called on to do anything yet,” Austin told a news conference at Ramstein Air Base in Germany. “No decision on anything has been made.”
Two U.S. officials said a decision on a possible evacuation of the embassy is expected soon, but it was unclear if there will be a public announcement.
Forces commanded by two previously allied leaders of Sudan’s ruling council began a violent power struggle last weekend. Hundreds have died so far and a nation reliant on food aid has been tipped into what the United Nations calls a humanitarian catastrophe.
John Kirby, the White House national security spokesperson, said President Joe Biden approved a plan this week to move U.S. forces nearby in case they are needed to help evacuate American diplomats.
“We are simply pre-positioning some additional capabilities nearby in case that they’re needed,” Kirby told reporters.
With the airport in Khartoum caught in the fighting and the skies unsafe, nations including the United States, Japan, South Korea, Germany and Spain have been unable to evacuate embassy staff.
A Western diplomat said the evacuation situation in Sudan is one of the most difficult they have seen, with Americans likely focused on getting a ceasefire and using that to get personnel out.
“In this case, the civil war starts in the capital, fighting is exactly where the embassies are and where the airport is. It’s unusually difficult,” the diplomat said.
Cameron Hudson, a U.S. Africa policy expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and former director for African affairs at the National Security Council, said the level of violence in Khartoum makes the situation for evacuation unpredictable.
“The major challenge is there’s a war going on across all corners of the city and the international airport in the middle of the city is not functional right now, so the challenge is moving people to a safe space to evacuate them,” Hudson said.
Washington has said private American citizens in Sudan should have no expectation of a U.S. government-coordinated evacuation. State Department deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel said the United States was in touch with several hundred American citizens understood to be in Sudan.
Earlier on Friday, the State Department confirmed the death of one U.S. citizen in the country.
UN WORKS TO EXTRACT STAFF
Other countries and the United Nations are also looking at how they can evacuate citizens and employees.
The U.N. has been trying to extract staff from “very dangerous” zones in Sudan to move them to safer locations, the top U.N. aid official in Sudan, Abdou Dieng, said on Thursday. Dieng said he had been moved to a safer area on Wednesday.
The U.N. has about 4,000 staff in Sudan, of which 800 are international staff. A U.N. source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there were a further 6,000 U.N. staff family members and associated personnel in Sudan.
Switzerland said on Friday it was examining ways to evacuate nationals from Sudan, and Sweden said it will evacuate embassy staff and families as soon as possible.
Spanish military aircraft are on standby and ready to evacuate some 60 Spanish nationals and others from Khartoum, and South Korea sent a military aircraft to stand by at a U.S. military base in Djibouti to evacuate its nationals when possible.
(Additional reporting by Steve Holland, Andrea Shalal and Humeyra Pamuk in Washington and Michelle Nichols in New YorkEditing by Don Durfee and David Gregorio)
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