The evacuation of Britons from war-torn Sudan finally began yesterday in a fug of terror and confusion.
The tenth day of fighting started with frustrated UK nationals being told ‘you don’t need to rush to the airport’ and to stay indoors, while seeing hundreds of other European citizens boarding their governments’ rescue flights.
Then, at lunchtime, Britons were suddenly instructed to make their way ‘as soon as possible’ to an airfield north of the capital Khartoum. But they were told they had to make their own way there.
Some described hellish journeys trying to navigate up to 20 checkpoints manned either by heavily-armed government soldiers or their gun-toting paramilitary rivals. Under threat of kidnap and looting, and with the crack of semi-automatic gunfire echoing across the city, families scrambled to reach the Wadi Seidna airstrip.
British government sources stressed the rescue operation was complex, had required detailed planning and it had been decided to ‘wait for a safe, practical window to put it into effect’, which came with the announcement of a 72-hour truce.
The evacuation of Britons from wartorn Sudan finally began yesterday in a fug of terror and confusion
Inevitably, the supposed ceasefire began to crumble almost immediately and by sunrise yesterday heavy fighting had erupted across Khartoum, with sporadic clashes also reported in the capital’s twin city of Omdurman across the Nile.
On BBC Breakfast, Alicia Kearns, the chairwoman of the foreign affairs committee, advised the up to 4,000 British nationals in Sudan to ‘stay tight, because outside is still not safe’. She said: ‘Gather your belongings, get ready for the journey, talk to your children about the type of journey you are about to go through, make sure your phone has signal.’
Meanwhile, France was boasting of having evacuated 500 and Germany announced it had rescued a similar number.
For more than a week, some British expats living in Sudan have expressed frustration at what they said was a lack of information from the Foreign Office.
They described how, having registering their details, they received scant information about any planned evacuation.
As the days went by, many decided they had no choice but to risk fleeing themselves rather than waiting for rescue.
One Londoner on a visit to her family in Sudan, who was caught up in the fighting, told BBC Radio 4’s World At One programme she had spent two ‘traumatic’ days driving to the border with Egypt with 40 others on a bus they had organised themselves.
She said: ‘We were desperately calling the British embassy to see if there were any evacuation plans imminent but they told us there weren’t any. The situation around us was deteriorating, so we wanted to get out while we could.’
Evacuees from Sudan board a bus after disembarking from a British Royal Air Force military plane in Cyprus
She said ‘soldiers with massive guns’ had boarded their bus at checkpoints and scared the children, and driving through the desert at night had been ‘deeply unpleasant’.
She was scathing of the Foreign Office, which had earlier organised an SAS mission to extract British diplomats, saying: ‘We were begging to know, even in the most brief or vague of terms, if there was some evacuation plans. We didn’t want to be in situation half way through the desert with two young kids. But they didn’t tell us anything. It was really disheartening that they pulled all the diplomats without giving any information as to what would happen to ordinary people.’
The woman told the BBC that the Foreign Office had cited data protection GDPR rules in refusing to accept British names for the evacuation list unless they were provided by a British national or their family. She said Sudanese people who had tried to help Britons by registering their names with the Foreign Office for them had been rebuffed ‘because of GDPR’.
A woman holds her child at Cyprus’ Joint Rescue Coordination Center after arriving with approximately 38 British nationals aboard UK military transport aircraft
Amar Osman, from Dunfermline, was another who decided not to wait for the British rescue mission. He said: ‘I’m just going to do it myself. I’m not waiting. Even if they got in touch, I don’t know how they are going to go about it, where we are going to meet, and so I’m just going to do it myself. And I think, I hope I’ve done the right decision.’ Many tried to get on buses driving to Egypt, despite the £65 fare soaring to £400.
Osman, a British doctor who was visiting family, told the BBC he felt he had no choice but to leave. ‘There were bombs falling 100 metres from my house. We’ve had like six houses bombed,’ he said, adding the journey out of the capital had been that ‘scariest thing ever’ but ‘there was no choice’.
Then shortly after 1pm yesterday, the Foreign Office sent messages to stranded Britons saying they would be helped to leave Sudan. They were instructed to travel ‘as soon as possible’ to Wadi Seidna, an airfield 18 miles north of Khartoum.
A British doctor, Abdelaal, who spoke to The Times, said there were 20 checkpoints to negotiate to get to the airstrip. In addition to strip searches and looting from paramilitaries, Abdelaal said he faced abduction if they discovered he was a doctor. He said he had already made three attempts to flee, but had been forced back each time, and on one occasion was shot at by the anti-government militants.
Briton Nadir Omara, 56, a consultant psychiatrist, claimed citizens had been offered ‘no clarity’ about the UK government’s evacuation plan.
Meanwhile, the German ambassador to the UK, Miguel Berger, tweeted a photo of a planeload of Germans and other nationalities including Britons being flown out of Khartoum, while the Berlin government’s foreign minister Annalena Baerbock boasted: ‘The fact that our citizens abroad can rely on not being left to their own devices in an emergency is not a bureaucratic matter of course, it is the result of courage, teamwork and tireless dedication’ by German officials.
In London, the Foreign Office defended its operation, saying it had more than 200 staff working around the clock who had engaged in over 6,000 calls and messages with UK nationals in Sudan.
And Sir William Patey, former UK ambassador to Sudan, said the challenges facing France and Italy were different, due to the numbers of people involved. He told the BBC: ‘I do think some of the criticism is pretty misplaced. I can understand why people are angry and why they’re anxious and why they want news. But I don’t think it’s been that slow. And I think at the end of the day, if the media and the individuals are being fair, they will look back and say actually they did a pretty good job if this evacuation delivers what we expect it to deliver.’
The Foreign Office said it had more than 200 staff working around the clock who were engaging with UK nationals in Sudan.
