Closing Summary
It’s slightly past midnight in Khartoum. Here’s a wrap-up of the day’s key events:
Six UK flights have evacuated 536 people from war-torn Sudan, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) said. UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly has said the UK “cannot guarantee” how many further evacuation flights will depart once the 72-hour ceasefire in Sudan expires on Thursday night.
A sixth RAF transport plane carrying evacuees is about to land in Cyprus, well short of the total number originally expected by this time but indicative of the pick up in pace of the rescue mission. It is not known how many British nationals who are believed to include women and children are on the A400M plane but, as has been the case thus far, they will be processed in Larnaca before embarking on onwards journeys.
On Wednesday, Nigeria started evacuating around 3,500 of its nationals, mostly students. “The evacuation of our citizens has commenced. Seven buses have left Khartoum and they are heading to Egypt,” Manzo Ezekiel, spokesman for Nigeria’s National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) told AFP.
A second American has died in Sudan, the White House said on Wednesday, and U.S. authorities are helping a small number of citizens seeking to leave the country during a ceasefire that has curbed fighting. While sporadic violence continues, the ceasefire announced by the United States on Monday appears to be holding, White House national security spokesman John Kirby said.
Omar al-Bashir is in custody in a military hospital amid reports of RSF prison breaks, with Reuters reporting that Sudan’s army said the ousted former president was being held in a military hospital under police custody. It claimed that the formerly jailed Bashir and about 30 others were moved to the hospital on the recommendation of medical staff in Kober prison before fighting broke out in the country.
The British Red Cross has warned that the “desperate” humanitarian need in Sudan risks becoming “catastrophic”. Sam Turner, head of east and southern African region, said: “We expect the humanitarian need will only grow in the coming days and weeks, including in neighbouring countries as people flee their homes to seek safety.”
The AFP newswire reports that Ahmed Harun, a leading figure of the regime of deposed dictator Omar al-Bashir, has said he has escaped prison. It reports: “Harun, who led the regime’s infamous counter-insurgency campaign in the western Darfur region in the mid-2000s and is wanted for war crimes by the international criminal court, said he had broken out of the capital’s Kober prison.”
A truce in the 11-day conflict has been undermined by Sudan’s army and paramilitary force. Reuters reports: “Sudan’s army and a paramilitary force battled on the outskirts of the capital on Wednesday, undermining a truce in an 11-day conflict that civilian groups fear could revive the influence of ousted autocrat Omar al-Bashir and his loyalists.”
Crowds of families have been growing at Sudan’s border crossing with Egypt, desperately trying to escape their country’s violence and sometimes waiting for days with little food or shelter, witnesses said on Wednesday. People have been making exhausting drives across the desert to access points out of the country, including the Arqin crossing into Egypt at the northern border, where families have been spending nights outside in the desert, waiting to be let in.
Sudanese authorities and the RSF have traded accusations over the release of prison inmates in Sudan. Thousands of convicted criminals, including some sentenced to death, were held in the vast Kober prison in Khartoum, along with senior and lower-ranking officials from the Bashir regime, which was toppled four years ago.
Cyprus’s foreign ministry spokesperson Theodoros Gotsis told the Guardian that some of the evacuees who had arrived on the first flights had spent Tuesday night in an army training camp in Larnaca. “We have activated our non-combatant national evacuation operation and as part of that all facilities at our disposal are being used,” he said ahead of a fourth RAF flight arriving at the island’s main international airport.
That’s it from me, Maya Yang, as we wrap up the blog for today. Thank you.
Foreign Secretary James Cleverly has said the UK “cannot guarantee” how many further evacuation flights will depart once the 72-hour ceasefire in Sudan expires on Thursday night, PA reports.
#Breaking Foreign Secretary James Cleverly has said the UK “cannot guarantee” how many further evacuation flights will depart once the 72-hour ceasefire in Sudan expires on Thursday night pic.twitter.com/xa5RTkdlD1
— PA Media (@PA) April 26, 2023
