France has closed its embassy in Khartoum, which is no longer “a meeting place” for people fleeing fighting in the Sudanese capital, the French Foreign Ministry announced Monday.
“The French embassy in Sudan is closed until further notice. It is no longer a meeting place for people who want to leave Khartoum,” said a spokeswoman for the ministry. in a statement, adding that the The embassy “continues its activities from Paris, under the responsibility of the ambassador”.
France, like other countries, launched an operation since Sunday to evacuate several hundred French citizens and other nationalities, organizing several flights between Khartoum and Djibouti.
Explosions and gunfire continued to ring out in Khartoum and other cities, but many other countries managed to negotiate operations to evacuate diplomatic personnel and civilians with the two belligerents: the army of General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the de facto ruler of the Sudan, and his former ally-turned-rival, General Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, who commands the Rapid Support Forces paramilitaries in English (RSF).
In addition to the European Union (EU), which has a delegation in Khartoum, seven member states (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Greece and the Czech Republic) were represented in the capital.
About 1,500 EU nationals lived in the country before the conflict broke out, according to an EU official.
Dozens of operations were carried out over the weekend and today the head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, announced that more than a thousand EU citizens had been evacuated from Sudan in a “complex operation”.
In addition to France, Germany, Spain and Italy also evacuated hundreds of civilians from their countries and others, including the Portuguese, and the Netherlands and Greece also had the help of other European countries to remove civilians from the conflict country.
Portuguese Foreign Minister João Gomes Cravinho announced today that of the 22 Portuguese who were in Sudan, 21 were willing to leave and one said he would stay in the African country.
Ireland is said to have begun the “withdrawal process” of its citizens and dependents, while Sweden has sent about 150 troops to repatriate its diplomats and nationals, according to the Defense Ministry.
Switzerland announced today that it has also closed its embassy and evacuated diplomatic staff and other nationals, as has Norway.
The United States, the United Kingdom and Canada were among the many countries that had already announced repatriation operations on Saturday.
South Africa joined the group today, with the government announcing that an operation is underway to “remove South Africans in Sudan and South African Embassy staff in Sudan.
“They are taken to a neighboring country to be taken to a safe place,” Clayson Monyela, spokesman for the State Department, told AFP.
The violence that broke out in Sudan on April 15, mainly in Khartoum and Darfur (west), has already resulted in more than 420 deaths and 3,700 injuries, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
Source: DN
