Senin, 24 April 2023

Sudan violence: UK help for Britons stuck in Sudan 'severely limited' - BBC

A building damaged during battles between the forces of two rival Sudanese generals in the southern part of Khartoum, on April 23, 2023.Getty Images

UK help for Britons stuck in Sudan will remain "severely limited" until a ceasefire is reached, Foreign Secretary James Cleverly has warned.

He said British diplomats and their families had been evacuated from Sudan in a "complex and rapid" operation.

However, some British nationals still in the country have said they feel abandoned by the UK government.

Violence in Sudan between two opposing forces has seen deadly shooting and shelling in the capital, Khartoum.

Mr Cleverly said there were "specific threats and violence directed towards diplomats" which led to the decision to evacuate staff.

He said the UK government remained "absolutely committed to supporting" Britons in Sudan but added that without an end to the fighting, ministers were "severely limited in our ability to provide assistance to British nationals".

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak also said work was continuing to ensure the safety of Britons who remained in the country.

The power struggle that erupted last week between Sudan's regular army and a paramilitary force called the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has also affected other parts of the country, leading to a growing humanitarian crisis.

Electricity is scarce, and food and water supplies are running out for many.

Sam, a British businessman living in Sudan, told the BBC that news of the UK evacuation at the weekend "gave us hope, but in the absence of any information from the government this was clearly a solution for diplomats only".

He described the situation as a "nightmare for those of us left behind", and said he knew of many people from other countries such as Hungary and South Africa whose embassies were making plans to evacuate nationals.

'A dicey situation'

Another UK citizen in Sudan, William, described a chaotic situation as he opted to leave Khartoum on a bus - organised by his Sudanese employer - to take him and other nationals to Egypt.

Speaking to the BBC's Newshour programme, he said the UK government had given him "nothing" in terms of support, adding: "We had to basically go private, we've had absolutely nothing but nonsense from the government and not even nonsense. We've had nothing.

"The internet's just gone out, so we've been on 3G all day. And we were all running out of data. And so communication was becoming increasingly difficult."

William described waiting to be collected by the bus as a "dicey situation" with "gunfire going off all the time".

"We're making quite slow progress but steady progress. So the idea is we continue going for the next two days, up to the Egyptian border, and then we're sort of safe."

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Mr Sunak and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi agreed on Sunday that the UK and Egypt would work with international partners on diplomatic efforts to secure a ceasefire.

Conservative MP Tobias Ellwood, chair of the Commons defence select committee, said the prime minister should now focus on "phase two" of evacuations to ensure all British passport holders who want to leave the country can be extracted.

Mr Ellwood said he did not know how many British passport holders there were in Sudan, but told BBC News he understood more than 1,000 people had registered with the Foreign Office and there were "easily a couple more thousand" who had not yet come forward.

Asked about criticisms that the UK had not acted quickly enough to evacuate British diplomats and their families, Mr Ellwood said more than 1,000 military personnel had been mobilised at very short notice.

Defence Secretary Ben Wallace told BBC News the British army, Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force had been involved in the weekend rescue, with C-130 Hercules and Airbus A400M transport aircraft used.

Alicia Kearns, conservative MP and chair of the foreign affairs select committee, said she expected there were "well over a thousand" British nationals who wanted to be evacuated from Sudan.

She urged the government to communicate regularly with those people and said the limited amount of contact so far "would suggest that no lessons have been learnt since Afghanistan".

However, she told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that getting British nationals out of Sudan was proving "enormously difficult".

On Sunday, Mr Cleverly chaired a sixth Cobra session - an emergency response committee made up of ministers, civil servants and others - to discuss Sudan's "escalation" of violence.

UK citizens in Sudan are being urged to tell the Foreign Office where they are in case more help becomes available, and a hotline has been set up for those who need urgent help.

Several other countries including France, Germany, Italy and Spain have been evacuating their diplomats and citizens.

US authorities said they had airlifted fewer than 100 people with three Chinook helicopters on Sunday in a "fast and clean" operation.

The US embassy in Khartoum is now closed, and a tweet on its official feed says it is not safe enough for the government to evacuate private US citizens.

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2023-04-24 06:43:18Z
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