Britons still in war-torn Sudan have been urged to get to the airport “as quickly as possible” after rival factions agreed to a last-minute ceasefire extension.
Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said British evacuation flights “are ongoing” from an airfield north of Khartoum but the Government was accused of “betrayal” over NHSdoctors still trapped in the country.
Roughly 900 British citizens had left on eight Government flights by Thursday night, with more due to arrive.
But a row has broken out over only UK passport holders being able to board escape planes.
Sudanese-born NHS doctor Abdulrahman Babiker was visiting family for Eid when fighting broke out.
He told the BBC he is due back on shift as a registrar at the Manchester Royal Infirmary on Tuesday.
However, despite having a UK work permit, he is not allowed on evacuation flights because the Government only accepts British passport holders.
At least 24 NHS doctors are believed to be in the same position, Newsnight reported.
“To be honest I feel totally betrayed,” Dr Babiker said. “I worked throughout Covid and I’m so disappointed.”
The Foreign Office said British nationals are being prioritised and while work permit holders are allowed to enter the UK, they must make their own way there.
A UK government spokesman added: “The evacuation response from Khartoum is open to all British nationals and their eligible dependents who wish to leave Sudan.
“Those who have existing entry clearance for the UK but are not the dependent of a British passport holder can still come to the UK via other points of exit, such as crossing the border into Egypt.”
Despite Sudan’s army and a paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) agreeing to a further 72-hour truce last night, there were reports of armed fighters rampaging through the ravaged region of Darfur, battling each other and looting shops and homes.
Mr Cleverly said: “British evacuation flights are ongoing. I urge all British nationals wishing to leave to proceed to the airport as quickly as possible.”
Ministers are still under pressure over the speed of the evacuation of ordinary citizens after removing diplomats from the country earlier this week.
At least 512 people have been killed in the fighting so far and almost 4,200 injured, although there were warnings on Friday that real number of deaths could be much higher.
The UK Government has been urged by chair of the Defence Select Committee Tobias Ellwood to move its embassy to Port Sudan to show it is not “abandoning” the country.
David Miliband, a former Foreign Secretary and the head of the International Rescue Committee, said: “The fact that for the last 10 days the vast bulk of political attention has been on getting out thousands of people and not on the need to tend to millions of people really sticks in the gullet.
“Of course the lives of the thousands who need to evacuate are important, but what about the 45 million who are left?”
The ceasefire extension has not stopped the fighting completely but created enough of a lull for tens of thousands of Sudanese people to flee to safer areas in the east of the country and given foreign nations time to evacuate thousands more of their citizens by land, air and sea.
It has brought easing of violence in Khartoum and its neighboring city Omdurman for the first time since the military and a rival paramilitary force began fighting on April 15.
Both the military, led by General Abdel Fattah Burhan, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, led by General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, said that they accepted the extension of the truce.
But explosions and heavy gunfire were reported in at least one Khartoum neighbourhood late last night.
A joint statement by mediators, including the African Union, the UK and the US, highlighted the breadth of international peace efforts, which have so far failed to end the fighting.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Washington was “very actively working” to extend the truce.
