a British Foreign Secretary, James Cleverly, said that people were evacuated in eight British planes and that more flights are scheduled to take place, noting that the latest number of casualties in Sudan reached 536 on Wednesday evening.
James Cleverly appealed to British citizens wishing to leave Sudan to do so “now”, before the armistice brokered by the United States of America expired, after 10 days of fighting.
“If you are planning to leave, leave now,” the minister said on Sky News.
“We can’t predict exactly what will happen when the ceasefire ends, but what we do know is that it will be much more difficult, if not impossible” to leave Sudan, Cleverly said, adding: “There are planes, there is space…we’ll get you out of there, but we can’t.” A guarantee that we will have it when the ceasefire ends.”
Only British passport holders, their families and certain foreign nationals, space permitting, are allowed to board aircraft bound for a British military base in Cyprus. From there they can travel to the UK.
More than 2,000 British citizens have informed the authorities that they intend to evacuate them.
The United Kingdom sent its embassy staff and their families home last Sunday and began sending its other citizens home on Tuesday evening. London continues to be the target of criticism for taking longer to evacuate its citizens than other countries.
The Sudanese Ministry of Health said, on Wednesday, that at least 512 people have been killed and 4,193 others have been injured since the outbreak of fighting, especially in Khartoum and Darfur (west).
And although the US-brokered 72-hour truce took effect on Monday morning, low-intensity fighting continued.
The fighting came after weeks of tension over reforming the security forces in talks to form a new transitional government.
Both forces were behind the joint coup d’état that overthrew Sudan’s transitional executive in October 2021.
Several countries, including Portugal, are withdrawing their citizens from Sudan due to heavy fighting.
Today, Wednesday, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement that twenty Portuguese who had intended to leave Sudan had already withdrawn from the country, and revealed that two citizens remained in the territory.
Read also: The United Nations calls for the opening of new humanitarian corridors in Sudan
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