The European Union has said it intends to withdraw its citizens from Khartoum as soon as security allows, as armed clashes in the Sudanese capital continue with no end in sight. The Spanish government has already sent two military transport aircraft for this purpose. Japan and South Korea have also taken similar measures.
Sudanese civil society and international leaders – headed by UN Secretary-General António Guterres – had called for a three-day ceasefire to allow people to gather for the holiday that marks the end of Ramadan, and to enable civilians to evacuate and distribute food and medical aid.
The country’s leader, military man Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, has again ignored calls for a ceasefire agreed to by the leader of the paramilitaries seeking to overthrow him, Mohamed Hamdan Daglo (known as Hemeti). Residents of the capital reported heavy shelling and street shootings for the seventh day. At least 413 people – including at least nine children – were killed and 3,551 others injured in the clashes, according to the World Health Organization.
A situation that is not limited to Khartoum. About 20,000 people have fled the Darfur region for Chad, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
The European Union, which has already seen a senior humanitarian official injured and its ambassador “attack” at his residence, is “trying to coordinate an operation” to get civilians out of the city, said a senior EU official, quoted by AFP.
The same, who portrayed Khartoum “in a high-risk situation”, said Brussels “is working on various options to evacuate people”. It would take three days without violence to carry out such an operation. “We will monitor the situation closely to wait for the moment when this can be done,” he added. “For now, the assessment of people on the ground, including the EU Embassy, is that there are no security conditions for such an operation to proceed,” he continued.
The official also indicated that the EU and the seven member states with diplomatic missions in Sudan, including France, Germany and Italy, are trying to strand EU citizens by road in Khartoum because the airport is closed. It is estimated that there are about 1,500 Europeans in the Sudanese capital.
For this operation, the Spanish Air Force has already positioned two A400 transport aircraft about 1300 kilometers away, in the small state of Djibouti, where France (which hosts German and Spanish troops), Italy, the US, the UK and China have military bases . Also Tokyo, which has 60 civilians in the country in conflict, and Seoul, which has 26 people in Sudan, each sent a C-130 with soldiers to Djibouti.
Source: DN
