The militia had previously agreed to “partially” open “all airports” in Sudan to evacuate foreigners. However, it was not possible to verify which airports are controlled by the RSF militia and which by the army.
In Sudan, units of the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have been fighting each other for over a week. An agreement to integrate the RSF militia into the armed forces had previously failed. Hundreds of people have been killed and thousands injured in the fighting.
The first foreigners were taken out of the country on Saturday. A ship carrying more than 150 people from different countries arrived in the port city of Jeddah in Saudi Arabia. In addition to 91 Saudi Arabians, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Riyadh, people from Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Tunisia, Pakistan, India, Bulgaria, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Canada and Burkina Faso were on board.
According to their own statements, other countries are also trying to evacuate their citizens. The crisis team met at the Foreign Office in Berlin on Saturday. According to a report by “Spiegel”, the federal government had to cancel an evacuation campaign for a good 150 Germans on Wednesday because of the ongoing fighting.
A spokeswoman for the Foreign Office said a “low three-digit number” of German citizens had asked for an evacuation from Sudan. 118 people work in Sudan for the federally owned German development company GIZ alone, including 103 employees from Germany.
