A British doctor was shot in the leg while trying to save his mother in Sudan as the country descended into chaos, his daughter has revealed.
The man, who recently retired after working for the NHS for three decades, was visiting his family in Khartoum to celebrate Ramadan and Eid al-Fitr.
But on April 15, fierce fighting broke out in the city between Sudan’s top two generals, sending the great Northeast African country headed for civil war.
Speak against The independent, the doctor’s daughter said his mother and another of his daughters had been without water for five days at his brother’s house, close to the capital’s airport. He then decided that they should be taken to a safer place.
The first daughter – a British doctor living in London – told the paper that her father drove a Land Rover to the house at dusk on Thursday but his car came under fire from ‘all directions’ and was shot in the thigh .
A British doctor was shot in the leg while trying to save his mother in Sudan as the country descended into chaos, his daughter has revealed. Pictured: Smoke rises over Sudan’s capital Khartoum on Saturday
The woman, named by The Independent as Dr. A to protect the identity of her family in Sudan, said: “They started shooting at the car first. My father continued, but then stopped because the shooting came from all sides.
“When he came out, he started to feel faint. He felt an intense heat on his leg, but his intense fear and adrenaline made him not pay attention.’
She said Sudan’s paramilitary forces – the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) – shot at her father because he was driving the Land Rover – a brand of car commonly used by the country’s national armed forces with which RSF is now in open conflict.
Dr. A said her father eventually convinced the RSF fighters that he was just a medic trying to save his family, and that he made it to his brother’s house.
However, when his second daughter – who is also a doctor – opened the door, she saw blood on his clothes, said Dr A.
The father was brought in and his wound was attended to before they made the treacherous journey back to the house where his mother usually lives in town.
Due to the danger of taking their injured father to a pharmacy or hospital, Doctor A told her sister to treat him at home with leftover antibiotics.
“He was shot in the thigh, so the wound is pretty superficial. But the actual car has gunfire where the headrests and backrests are,” Dr A told the paper.
The British-Sudanese dual national said if her father had been in the car in any other position, “he would be dead.”
Now she says she is most concerned about her family’s dwindling food supplies and their supply of medicines. They also lack reliable running water and an intermittent internet connection, making their situation even more challenging.
Dr. A said the British government has done little to help her family and other British nationals trapped in the country descending into “chaos”.
She said she was able to talk to someone from the State Department on Saturday – a week after fighting broke out – but was only allowed to register her family’s names on a list of people to be evacuated from the embattled country.
The father, who recently retired after working for the NHS for three decades, was visiting his family in Khartoum to celebrate Ramadan and Eid al-Fitr. But fighting broke out on April 15, trapping him and his family in the country. Pictured: Sudanese army soldiers loyal to army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan sit atop a tank in the Red Sea city of Port Sudan on April 20
Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said Britain will begin today evacuating British citizens trapped in Sudan after being accused of abandoning them.
Military flights will evacuate at least 2,000 British nationals holding British passports from an airport outside the capital Khartoum as a three-day ceasefire came into effect.
Because the grandmother of Dr. However, A does not have dual citizenship, which makes her family’s situation even more difficult because her father will not leave her behind, she said.
She denounced the government for having no plan after Britain evacuated diplomats, but “the rest didn’t know what happened next.”
“We have been let down and let down by the British government. It is very frustrating and makes you quite angry. If a country can’t protect its own citizens, who can?’
A government spokesman told The Independent it was “urgently examining all routes” for detained British nationals to leave the country.
Cleverly said today Foreign Office officials have begun contacting British nationals trapped in Sudan directly about the “large-scale” operation involving some 1,400 military personnel.
Foreign Secretary Andrew Mitchell said on Monday some 4,000 Britons with dual citizenship and 400 with British passports were in Sudan, while 2,000 people had applied to the ministry seeking help to get out.
But there are fears on the ground that the government’s belated decision to evacuate civilians – after choosing to rescue only diplomats – is ‘too little, too late’ for the British because of the danger of getting through the various checkpoints to to travel the airport.
Mr Cleverly admitted that the British will have to ‘make their own way’ through Khartoum – where the fighting is fiercest – without any help from the government.
The State Department said priority will be given to families with children, the elderly and those with medical conditions.
It said British nationals are not allowed to come to the airport unless called, and warned that the situation remains volatile, meaning the ability to carry out evacuations could change in the near future.
Sudan’s warring generals pledged on Tuesday to observe a new three-day ceasefire brokered by the United States and Saudi Arabia in a bid to pull Africa’s third-largest country out of the abyss.
The claims were immediately undermined by the sound of heavy gunfire and explosions in the capital of Khartoum. According to local residents, fighter jets flew over.
Several previous ceasefires declared since fighting broke out on April 15 have not been observed, though periodic lulls over the weekend’s major Islamic holiday have allowed the dramatic evacuations of hundreds of diplomats, aid workers and other foreigners by air and land. made.
For many Sudanese, the departure of foreigners and the closure of embassies is a frightening sign that international powers expect an exacerbation of the fighting that has already plunged the population into disaster.
The main players in the power struggle are General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan (left), head of the army and leader of Sudan’s ruling council since 2019, and his deputy on the council, RSF leader General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (right), general known as Hemedti
Many Sudanese have desperately looked for ways to escape the chaos, fearing that the rival camps will escalate their all-out struggle for power once the evacuations are complete.
The fighting has pitted forces loyal to army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan against those of his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, who commands the RSF.
The RSF evolved from the Janjaweed militia that then-President Omar al-Bashir unleashed in the Darfur region 20 years ago, leading to accusations of war crimes against Bashir and others.
More than 420 people, including at least 273 civilians, have been killed since fighting began on April 15, and another 3,700 injured.