More countries rush to remove their citizens from Sudan

Khartoum - Europe, China and Japan raced to extract their citizens from Khartoum on Monday and thousands more people took advantage of an apparent lull in fighting between the army and a paramilitary force over the past two days to escape Sudan.

The sudden eruption of violence on April 15 triggered a humanitarian crisis and has killed 427 people, UN agencies said. Others have expressed fear for their lives as clashes spread through residential areas.

Nations including Gulf states and Russia were trying to get citizens out on Monday, and there was a growing exodus to Sudan’s neighbours, including 10,000 people who fled to South Sudan despite chronic instability there.

Along with millions of Sudanese without access to basic services, foreign diplomats, aid workers, students and their families found themselves in a war zone last week. Internet connectivity was cut on Monday, website Netblocks reported.

Fighter jets have bombed the capital, the main airport has been at the centre of fighting and artillery barrages have made movement unsafe in and out of one of Africa’s largest cities. Diplomats have been targeted in attacks, and at least five aid workers killed.

Despite sustained pressure from countries concerned by the conflict’s wider repercussions as well as the safety of their nationals, the two sides have not abided by a temporary truce.

However, fighting calmed enough over the weekend for the US to get embassy staff out by military helicopter, triggering a rush of evacuations by other countries.

Families with children crowded into Spanish and French military transport planes, while a group of nuns were among the evacuees on an Italian aircraft, photographs showed. Some of the flights left from the Wadi Seyidna air base north of Khartoum, the army said.

At least two convoys involved in evacuations came under attack at the weekend, including one carrying Qatari embassy staff and another carrying French citizens, one of whom was injured.

Up to 20,000 people have already fled to Chad, UN agencies said last week. Officials in South Sudan’s Renk County said on Monday they had received about 10,000 people since the crisis started.

Dau Aturjong, the army's commander in Renk, said three quarters of the arrivals are South Sudanese while the others are Sudanese, Eritrean, Kenyan, Ugandan and Somali.

“Yesterday alone we received 3,000 people, and many people are still on the way because of transport. We have no fuel to bring them in,” said county commissioner Kak Padiet.

South Sudan won independence from Sudan in 2011, after a decades-long civil war. Since independence the new country has been beset by its own civil war and refugees had previously spilled into its northern neighbour.

Hundreds of people, including residents of Turkey, Djibouti and other countries, have arrived in the Ethiopian town of Metema Yohannes near the Sudan border, mayor Habtie Addisu said.

The fighting has closed most hospitals and curtailed water and electricity supplies.