It was a risky and expensive rescue – but only for 30 people, including 24 British diplomats and their families. While France and Germany evacuated several hundred each from Sudan, the UK and the US chose to focus on staff at their embassies.
On Friday, rumours spread that elite British soldiers – from the SAS and the Parachute regiment – had been scrambled to RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus, in response to a sudden crisis in Sudan that nobody had anticipated.
