The Bundeswehr has completed its evacuation mission in Sudan. As the Bundeswehr Operations Command near Berlin announced on Twitter on Tuesday evening, an A400M aircraft with around 120 people on board landed in Jordan. The subsequent onward journey to Germany is being prepared. The Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defense had previously announced that a final evacuation flight would take place on Tuesday evening.
According to the ministries, Germany took over the multinational flight coordination at the airport near Khartoum on Monday. Inspector General Carsten Breuer is now in contact with partner countries who will take over the flight coordination from Wednesday, the ministries said. Those Germans who remained in Sudan should be evacuated in the coming days with the help of partner countries.
Because of the acute danger situation, the Bundeswehr mission was initially started on Sunday without the parliamentary approval that was actually required. The federal government wants to keep open the possibility of continuing the mission in Sudan until the end of May: the Bundestag is to vote on a corresponding mandate on Wednesday and thus also subsequently approve the mission.
Federal Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens) and Defense Minister Boris Pistorius (SPD) thanked all civil and military forces “for their great work on the evacuation mission” on Tuesday. Army units have been fighting the paramilitary RSF militia in Sudan for more than a week.
The Air Force has thus evacuated a total of more than 600 people in the past few days. The military action was justified by the federal government with the tense security situation: Heavy fighting broke out between the military and paramilitaries in Sudan more than a week ago.
The federal government wanted to end the evacuation operation, in which around 1,000 soldiers are deployed, on Tuesday. Germans who have remained in Sudan and who have not yet been able to come to the airport will be taken along by international partners on their evacuation flights over the next few days.
In Sudan, de facto President Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, who is also the supreme commander of the army, wants to use the military to oust his deputy Mohammed Hamdan Daglo, the leader of the influential paramilitary group Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The two had taken over the leadership of the country with around 46 million inhabitants through two joint military coups in 2019 and 2021.
According to information from the World Health Organization (WHO), at least around 460 people died and almost 4,100 were injured in the fighting. However, the true number is likely to be significantly higher.
