LAST UPDATE | 26 Apr 2023
CLOSE TO 90 Irish citizens have been evacuated from Sudan on flights arranged by EU partners and the UK.
Tánaiste Michéal Martin has thanked “our international partners for continued support” in so far evacuating 88 Irish citizens.
He added that officials in the Irish Embassy in Kenya, which is accredited to Sudan, and in Dublin are maintaining regular contact with registered Irish citizens in Sudan.
Further progress being made with the evacuation of Irish citizens from #Sudan.
— Micheál Martin (@MichealMartinTD) April 26, 2023
A total of 88 citizens and their dependents have now been evacuated. (1/2)
In a statement to The Journal, a Department of Foreign Affairs spokesperson said the 88 people have been evacuated from Sudan via Djibouti in east Africa, Jordan, and Cyprus.
The spokesperson noted that the EU and UK evacuation missions are “only in a position to accommodate those with EU/UK citizenship and their dependents”.
The British evacuation mission from Sudan has lifted 301 people to safety over four flights.
Another RAF flight was preparing to depart the Wadi Saeedna airstrip near the capital of Khartoum this afternoon, with a further three flights expected later in the day.
Ireland’s Emergency Civil Assistance Team (ECAT) and a small team of Department officials are in Djibouti to help arrange accommodation when needed and to advise on onward arrangements, such as travel to Ireland.
Irish Embassies in Jordan, Egypt, and Cyprus are providing consular assistance to people arriving into these countries.
The spokesperson said the deployment of the ECAT in Sudan will “depend on operational and security criteria”.
Today is the second full day of a three-day ceasefire in Sudan. However, some battles have continued throughout the country.
Witnesses have reported “heavy air strikes” in East Nile, east of the capital, and “a huge explosion in the direction of a paramilitary camp”.
Warplanes have flown over northern suburbs of Khartoum, drawing heavy anti-aircraft fire from the paramilitaries, witnesses told AFP.
In southern Khartoum, machinegun fire has been reported near one of the homes owned by paramilitary commander Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, who has led the heavily armed Rapid Support Forces (RSF) into war against the armed forces, under army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan.
In the chaos, Ahmed Harun, a leading figure of the regime of deposed strongman Omar al-Bashir, said last night he and others had escaped prison.
Harun is wanted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court in connection with the Bashir regime’s unleashing of Janjaweed militias against non-Arab ethnic minorities in Darfur.
Beginning in 2003, that conflict left around 300,000 dead and 2.5 million displaced, according to the UN.
Daglo’s RSF are descended from the Janjaweed.
After being trapped in the empty Kober jail in “the crossfire of this current battle”, Harun said in a recorded TV address that he and fellow ex-regime members had taken “our protection in our own hands”.
The ICC prosecutor’s office said it was following developments but added there was no independent confirmation of the Kober detainees’ status.
Bashir, 79, was ousted by the military in 2019 in the wake of mass pro-democracy protests.
He had himself been held in Kober prison.
But the army said Bashir and others had been transferred to a military hospital before fighting erupted “due to their health conditions”, and that they remained under judicial police guard.
The RSF claimed today that the war was “a cover” to “get the leaders of the deposed regime out of prison”.
A similar view came from the Forces of Freedom and Change (FFC), the main civilian bloc ousted from power by Burhan and Daglo.
The FFC said the re-emergence of Harun was proof “the deposed regime and its dissolved party are – through their assets in the armed forces – behind the ongoing war”.
After Bashir’s ouster that had raised hopes for a transition to democracy, Burhan and Daglo seized full power in a 2021 coup, but have now fallen out.
The fighting has killed at least 512 people and wounded more than 4,000, according to the health ministry, and reduced some districts of greater Khartoum to ruins.
The dead include two American civilians, US officials confirmed. One of them was a Sudanese-American doctor Bushra Ibnauf Sulieman of the University of Khartoum, according to a Washington, DC public relations firm.
His loss adds to the devastation suffered by Sudan’s health care system.
More than 60% of health care facilities in Khartoum are closed because of the conflict, the World Health Organization said Wednesday.
A total of 14 hospitals have been shelled, the doctors’ union said, while 19 others are out of service.
The WHO also said it was assessing the threat posed to public health after fighters in Sudan occupied a national laboratory holding samples of deadly diseases.
The UN representative to Sudan, Volker Perthes, told the UN Security Council that “both of the warring parties have fought with disregard for the laws and norms of war”.
Perthes, who has stayed in Sudan, said they have been “attacking densely populated areas with little consideration for civilians, for hospitals, or even for vehicles transferring the wounded and sick”.
The ceasefire is to expire at 10pm Irish time tomorrow but White House national security spokesman John Kirby said the US remains “in direct contact” with both generals, working with them “to see if we can get this ceasefire extended”.
– © AFP 2023 and with additional reporting from Diarmuid Pepper
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