Americans flee violent clashes in Sudan in first mass evacuations as ceasefire extends 72 hours
A group of Americans was the first to board a US Navy boat in Port Sudan on Sunday as part of the first evacuation of civilians from the war-torn country.
Some 200 to 300 Americans arrived at the port on Saturday after a convoy of buses carried them more than 500 miles from the capital Khartoum, US officials confirmed.
The dangerous land journey took place under the guidance of armed drones, which had been monitoring the evacuation routes for days.
From Port Sudan, the Americans will cross the Red Sea with naval ships to the Saudi port city of Jeddah.
The group is fleeing deadly fighting that broke out two weeks ago between the Sudanese army and the rebel paramilitary group RSF. Their evacuation efforts came as the two groups agreed to another 72-hour ceasefire to facilitate the evacuation of foreigners.
A group of Americans boarded a Navy boat in Port Sudan on Sunday during the first evacuation of US citizens from the war-torn country.
US citizens board USNS Brunswick as they evacuate from Port Sudan on Sunday
The US sent the naval vessel USNS Brunswick, a fast transport ship, is temporarily moving to Port Sudan to assist in the evacuation, officials confirmed to Reuters on Sunday.
One of the officials said hundreds of civilians are likely to be evacuated on the boat and taken to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia.
Officials said exact figures for the number of evacuees in the convoy would be released once the Americans arrived safely in Jeddah. That reports NBC News.
The Department of Defense has deployed U.S. intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets to support air and land evacuation routes that Americans are using, and we are moving naval assets within the region to provide needed coastal support. spokesperson Sabrina. Singh on Saturday.
Some Americans are said to have arrived in Jeddah on Saturday, although it is again unclear how many.
Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry also confirmed on Saturday that Americans are among the 1,866 people who have arrived in Jeddah following Sudan’s evacuation.
A US soldier uses a metal detector to search US citizens arriving from Port Sudan for evacuation on April 30
Officials said exact figures for the number of evacuees in the convoy would be released once the Americans arrived safely in Jeddah.
Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry confirmed on Saturday that Americans were among the 1,866 people who arrived in Jeddah following Sudan’s evacuation.
The US, which had none of its officials on site for the Khartoum evacuation, has previously been criticized by families of Americans imprisoned in Sudan for ruling out an evacuation because it was too dangerous.
US special operations forces flew briefly to the capital Khartoum on April 22 to airlift US embassy staffers and other US government personnel.
But several thousand American citizens were left behind, many of them with dual citizenship.
More than a dozen other countries have already conducted evacuations for their citizens, using a combination of military aircraft, naval vessels and ground personnel.
Since the conflict between two rival generals broke out on April 15, the US has been warning its citizens to make their own way out of the country, even though officials have tried to connect Americans with other countries’ evacuation efforts.
US soldiers evacuate civilians from Port Sudan on Sunday as clashes between the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces and the Sudanese army continue
But that changed when officials chose to exploit a relative lull in the fighting to organize their own convoy for Americans.
With no evacuation flights near the capital that other countries are offering their citizens, American citizens were forced to make the perilous overland journey from Khartoum to the country’s main port on the Red Sea, Port Sudan.
A Sudanese-American family making the trip previously described passing through numerous checkpoints manned by gunmen and passing the bodies and vehicles of other fleeing families who had died en route.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said the convoy was carrying US citizens, local people employed by the US and citizens of allied countries.
“We reiterate our warning to Americans not to travel to Sudan,” he said.
In the fighting that broke out on April 15, two Americans have been confirmed killed.
One was a civilian who, according to officials, had been caught in crossfire. The other was an Iowa City doctor who was stabbed to death in front of his home and family in Khartoum as part of the lawless violence that accompanied the fighting.
More than 500 people have been killed in the fighting so far.