Sudan updates: Rescued civilians reach Saudi Arabia, Turkey

A ship carrying 1,687 civilians fleeing violence in Sudan arrived in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday, the country’s foreign ministry said.

The rescue operation was Saudi Arabia’s largest so far, after several planes and boatloads of people from Sudan arrived in the country in recent days.

Among the rescued civilians were 13 Saudi citizens while the rest of the passengers came from more than 50 other countries.

The group was “transported by one of the kingdom’s ships, and the kingdom was keen to provide all the basic needs of foreign nationals in preparation for their departure,” the Saudi Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Meanwhile, more than 100 Turkish civilians landed in Istanbul on Wednesday.

It was the first planeload of Turkish citizens out of Sudan, and flew via Ethiopia.

Several more flights are expected to evacuate the remaining Turkish citizens crossing into Ethiopia.

Numerous countries including the United States and Germany have evacuated their citizens from Sudan as fighting rages on between the Sudanese army under Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, more commonly known as Hemeti.

Here are other key headlines around the Sudan crisis for Wednesday, April 26:

Germany gives details on number of evacuees

Germany said on Wednesday that over 700 people in total have been evacuated from Sudan after the military ended its rescue flights out of the country. Of the total rescued, 200 were Germans.     

The German Defense Ministry said a Bundeswehr aircraft landed in Jordan on Tuesday evening with 78 people on board. 

Omar al-Bashir in military hospital: reports

Sudan’s jailed former strongman Omar al-Bashir is reportedly in a military hospital, officials said, after his whereabouts came into question on Wednesday.

Questions arose over al-Bashir’s whereabouts after a former minister in his government, Ali Haroun, announced on Tuesday he had left the prison with other former officials amid the fighting.

But military officials told the Associated Press that Bashir, Haroun and others had been moved to a high-security military hospital in Khartoum.

Sources inside the hospital told the Reuters news agency that Bashir had been moved to the facility just before fighting started on April 15.

Bashir ruled Sudan for nearly 30 years and is wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of genocide in Darfur. He was overthrown after mass protests in 2019 and jailed for corruption.

Analysts say the “deep state” that underpinned Bashir’s authoritarian rule is largely intact, noting that both army chief Burhan and RSF-leader Hemeti served under him in the past.

Sudan ceasefire on shaky ground

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No end in sight to fighting: UN

The United Nations’ special envoy to Sudan said there is no sign of the fighting ending anytime soon.

Speaking via video link from Port Sudan late on Tuesday, Volker Perthes told the Security Council that neither the army nor the RSF showed readiness to “seriously negotiate, suggesting that both think that securing a military victory over the other is possible.”

“This is a miscalculation,” he said.

Perthes said both sides fought “with disregard for the laws and norms of war,” having attacked densely populated areas with little consideration for civilians or even hospitals.

“The conflict will not, and must not, be resolved on the battlefield,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres added.

zc/wd (AP, Reuters, AFP)

Article source: https://www.dw.com/en/sudan-updates-rescued-civilians-reach-saudi-arabia-turkey/a-65435841?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf