The deadly fighting that has been raging for more than a week in Sudan has forced several European capitals and Washington to evacuate their nationals or their diplomatic personnel.
After more than a week of deadly fighting, the Quai d’Orsay announced on Monday the closure of the French embassy in Sudan “until further notice”. “It is no longer a meeting point for people wishing to leave Khartoum”, specifies the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
This Sunday, the Chief of the Defense Staff Thierry Burkhard unveiled the start of Operation Sagittarius, aimed at evacuating French nationals and other allied nations and sheltering them. A first French plane had left Khartoum with a hundred people on board, before a second took off this morning.
After the closure of the French embassy on Monday, the Quai d’Orsay indicated that the French representation “will continue its activities from Paris under the responsibility of the ambassador. France is mobilized to facilitate a ceasefire and the resumption of the political transition process in Sudan”.
Fights between enemy generals
In total, more than 1000 nationals of the European Union have been evacuated, as indicated by the head of European diplomacy Josep Borrell. In Khartoum, conditions are currently extremely difficult, with no electricity, internet or mobile means of communication.
Sudan, the third largest country in Africa, has been in the throes of deadly fighting since Saturday April 15. The troops of two enemy generals, Abdel Fattah Al-Bourhane and Mohamed Hamdane Daglo, clash in the streets of the Sudanese capital but also in the four corners of the country.
In Khartoum, these fights have already resulted in 420 deaths and 3,700 injuries, many of them in the Darfur region, already the victim of “ethnic cleansing” in the past, as denounced by the UN in 2007.
