Islamabad, 24 Apr. Pakistan said on Monday that it has begun to evacuate 427 of its Sudanese nationals after transferring them to a northern city due to the fighting that has been going on for more than a week between the army and paramilitaries.
“We continue to follow developments in Sudan and work with our embassies in the region to bring relief to Pakistanis there. 427 Pakistanis have reached (the north-eastern city of) Port Sudan safely and are being accommodated before arrangements for their travel are coordinated. back,” Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Mumtaz Baloch said in a statement.
The Information Minister, Marriyum Aurangzeb, affirmed for her part that “continuous efforts for 72 hours” have been successful as the air repatriation of Pakistanis began today in coordination with Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt.
The minister noted that small groups of Pakistanis are being transported to safe areas from Khartoum.
The fighting in the Sudanese capital has made evacuation work difficult, due to clashes between the Sudanese Army and the Rapid Support Forces (FAR) paramilitary group, and the Pakistani embassy had called on Pakistanis to remain in their homes.
“Everyone in the embassy is safe after a few bullets hit the embassy wall this afternoon,” the Pakistani mission said in a statement last week.
In recent days, several countries, such as the United States, Japan, Spain and South Korea, announced the deployment of aircraft in Djibouti -a small country some 1,700 kilometers from Khartoum and where both the US and China have bases- to coordinate the evacuation.
According to the United Nations, more than 420 people have been killed in Sudan and more than 3,700 injured since hostilities began.
The fighting that began on April 15 between the Sudanese Army and the FAR, which has led Sudan to suffer one of the worst crises in its recent history, arose after weeks of tension over the reform of the security forces in the negotiations to form a new transitional government.
Both forces were the architects of the joint coup that overthrew the transitional government of Sudan in October 2021. EFE
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