Massachusetts teacher and daughter escape Sudan as White House refuses to evacuate
A Massachusetts teacher and her 18-month-old daughter have escaped from war-torn Sudan as the White House was criticized for refusing to rescue 16,000 imprisoned Americans.
Trillian Clifford from Ashland and her daughter Alma hid in their apartment for ten days after fighting broke out in the capital Khartoum.
They made their daring escape Tuesday, leaving the African country between 1 and 3 p.m. local time, according to Rebecca Winter, Clifford’s sister-in-law.
Winter said the pair still had “a few days of travel ahead of them” but hoped to fly back to the US in “a few days.”
“They are exhausted but seem relieved to have crossed the border,” she said the Boston Globe.
Trillian Clifford of Ashland and her daughter Alma were among an estimated 16,000 Americans trapped in war-torn Sudan
Smoke rises in the capital Khartoum last week as fighting broke out between Sudanese armed forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces
Clifford taught children of US Embassy officials at the Khartoum International American School.
The school organized the evacuation of its foreign employees, who are all traveling together, Winter said.
Due to security concerns, she has not disclosed their current location.
It came after White House spokesman John Kirby said on Monday it was not safe to evacuate the remaining Americans in Sudan because doing so would put them in “more danger.”
He advised civilians to “shelter in place” instead, as it was too risky to move around the city.
But officials have since said that if individuals wanted to escape by land, the US government could help from afar.
The White House evacuated US embassy staff on Sunday, but thousands of Americans remain and President Joe Biden’s administration has ruled out any further evacuation.
The decision has been criticized by former officials, including Brett Bruen, who served as an Obama diplomat and worked to evacuate Ivory Coast during the 2004 civil war there.
In a column for DailyMail.com, he called the advice “unrealistic, dangerous and deeply irresponsible.”
“This is not the way the United States behaved when I served abroad,” he wrote, adding that “leaving Americans in the Sudan is part of a problematic Biden White House pattern.”
Clifford, left, worked at the Khartoum International American School, where she teaches the children of US Embassy officials
Clifford and her daughter have come from Sudan and hope to fly home in a few days
“It is not safe now for another evacuation attempt. That would actually endanger Americans more, not less,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said on CBS Mornings.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken (second from left) oversees the operation to evacuate US personnel from his embassy in Khartoum
The United Nations convoy leaves Khartoum for Port Sudan on the Red Sea
Winter had previously called on the US government to evacuate families trapped in Sudan, who continue to experience a power outage as temperatures soar above 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
She said her sister-in-law had weaned her daughter off breast milk and noted that “there has been no humanitarian assistance due to the ongoing fighting.”
“It went from everything that was perfectly normal eight days ago, to suddenly a war that started overnight,” Winter explained to WBUR.
She was told for days by the US embassy that because the fighting is so fierce – and even the Sudanese people had never seen such fierce fighting in the capital – they had no idea if or when they would be able to fetch her supplies, such as food and water.’
An estimated 16,000 private US citizens are registered with the embassy in Khartoum as being in Sudan. But officials dispute that number, warning it could be too high.
Despite a three-day ceasefire brokered by the US, fighting continued in the capital from Monday evening to Tuesday morning.
One American has already been killed in the conflict and the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 413 people have been killed and 3,551 injured since the outbreak of civil war earlier this month.
Sudanese army soldiers loyal to army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan man a position in the Red Sea city of Port Sudan
A soldier carries a child as evacuees from Sudan disembark from a plane at a military airfield in Amman, Jordan
A group of 343 citizens of Jordan, Palestine, Iraq, Syria and Germany evacuated from Sudan disembark military aircraft at Marka Military Airport, in Amman, Jordan
The WHO on Tuesday warned there is “huge biological risk” after fighters seized a central public laboratory in Khartoum, kept samples of diseases such as polio and measles and created an “extremely, extremely dangerous” situation.
The power struggle is between the Sudanese army, led by General Abdel-Fattah Burhan, and the RSF, led by General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo.
The rival generals came to power after a pro-democracy uprising led to the ouster of former leader Oma al-Bashir. In 2021, the generals joined forces to seize power through a coup.
But Burhan and Dagalo fell out over a recent international brokerage deal that was intended to bring the RSF into the military and eventually lead to civilian rule.
It is not clear who controls the country.