The Chinese navy announced it had evacuated 493 people from Sudan, including 215 Pakistanis and a Brazilian family of six, taking advantage of a tenuous ceasefire in a country entering its third week of war.
According to a statement, quoted by official CCTV television on Monday, the navy evacuated 272 Chinese and citizens of five other countries from the Red Sea coastal city of Port Sudan.
The Weishanhu military ship arrived “without incident” at the port of Jeddah, in neighboring Saudi Arabia at 9:00 a.m. this Saturday (7:00 a.m. in Lisbon), reported the official Chinese news agency Xinhua.
China has done everything possible to expel citizens of “friendly countries” from Sudan, Liu Jinsong, head of Asia at China’s foreign ministry, told the Pakistani ambassador in Beijing.
The ministry had previously said that more countries were asking China for help to evacuate their citizens from Sudan.
According to the Brazilian press, a group of 12 Brazilian players and coaches, who worked at the Al-Merreikh soccer club, based in the capital Khartoum, managed to leave the country across the border with Egypt and return to Brazil last week.
At the time, the press reported, citing information from the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, that at least seven Brazilians were still safely in Sudan, awaiting evacuation.
The conflict has already caused around 530 deaths and around 4,600 injuries and has led to the flight of thousands of Sudanese to safer parts of the country or to neighboring nations and the withdrawal of foreign citizens, including 20 Portuguese.
Clashes between the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese Army have been taking place since April 15, following tensions over the reform of the army and the integration of paramilitaries into regular forces, within the framework of a political process that aims to restore democracy in the country after the 2021 coup.
Both the Army and the Rapid Support Forces were behind the coup that overthrew Sudan’s transitional government in October 2021.
The two sides have agreed to send representatives to the talks, initially in Saudi Arabia, the United Nations representative in the country said on Monday.
If the negotiations take place, they will initially focus on establishing a “stable and reliable” ceasefire, Volker Perthes told the Associated Press news agency, leaving, however, the warning about the difficulties for negotiations to take place.
A series of temporary truces over the past week has eased fighting in a few areas, while heavy fighting has continued in others.
Aid groups have been trying to restore aid to a country where nearly a third of its 46 million people relied on international aid before the violence broke out.
Source: TSF
