Sudan | Bundeswehr ends evacuation mission

Germany ends evacuation flights from Sudan. Despite the ceasefire, the situation is critical. The WHO speaks of an “extremely dangerous” situation.

The federal government wants to end the evacuation mission of German soldiers in Sudan after a sixth Luftwaffe flight planned for Tuesday. “If other nations ensure the operation of air traffic, no further German evacuation flights from this region are planned,” said the Ministry of Defense and the Federal Foreign Office in Berlin.

So far, the Bundeswehr has flown around 500 people from 30 countries out of the embattled country, more than a third of them Germans.

According to information from the German Press Agency, an appeal for the return of the emergency services to the Wunstorf air base in Lower Saxony was already planned for Friday. Both ministries announced that the approximately 1,000 men and women deployed would be transferred back in the coming days.

According to the ministries, Germans who have remained in Sudan and who have not yet been able to come to the airport will be taken along by international partners on their evacuation flights in the next few days. Defense Minister Boris Pistorius (SPD) said before the meeting of the SPD parliamentary group in Berlin: “Through the Foreign Office, everyone who was reachable was also reached and made their way to the airport.”

But the situation in Sudan remains critical. Only on Tuesday afternoon did the World Health Organization (WHO) warn that the situation was “extremely, extremely dangerous”. Fighters had previously occupied a state medical laboratory with samples of the causative agents of diseases such as polio, cholera and measles. The employees were thrown out.

“The occupation of the medical laboratory by a party to the conflict poses a very serious biological risk,” said WHO representative in Sudan, Nima Saeed Abid, via video link at a press conference in Geneva. He stressed that samples of various potentially deadly pathogens such as cholera or polio were stored in the laboratory and must not be released under any circumstances.

A Red Cross materials store had been looted, reported Farid Aiywar, representative of the Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). Therefore, hospitals could hardly be supported with medicines and other material.

According to WHO information, at least around 460 people died and almost 4,100 were injured in the fighting. However, the true number is likely to be significantly higher.

An employee of the Egyptian embassy in Sudan was among the dead. A spokesman for the Foreign Ministry in Cairo said on Twitter late Monday evening that he was killed on the way to the embassy in Khartoum. The man worked as a deputy administrative attaché. He was on his way to the embassy to support the evacuation of Egyptian citizens.

In addition, thousands of people have fled to neighboring countries or are on the way there. The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), the UN Organization for Migration (IOM) and the Red Cross are offering water, food and other support in the border regions, as they reported in Geneva on Tuesday.

Thousands of people have already arrived in the desperately poor neighboring countries of Chad and South Sudan. South Sudan is preparing for the return of 125,000 South Sudanese and 45,000 Sudanese refugees, said Marie-Helene Verney, the UNHCR representative in South Sudan.

At least 20,000 people have arrived in Chad since the fighting began, said UNHCR representative in Chad, Laura Lo Castro. The first refugees have also arrived in Egypt.

The refugees need drinking water, food, hygiene items, kitchen utensils, mats and plastic sheeting. There were already 400,000 Sudanese refugees in Chad before the crisis.

More than 800,000 people from South Sudan lived in Sudan, mainly in the capital Khartoum. Many returnees are likely to join families in regions that are themselves suffering from conflict, climate change and food shortages. Three quarters of the twelve million inhabitants are already dependent on humanitarian aid.