…By Henry George for TDPel Media.
A ceasefire began on Tuesday, April 25 in Sudan, but thousands of people remain stranded in the country with a race against time to evacuate them before the ceasefire ends.
Military flights will be used to evacuate families with children, elderly citizens, and those with medical issues from an airfield outside Khartoum.
The government has asked people not to travel to the airfield until they receive direct contact from officials.
The conflict in Sudan is a struggle between General Abdel-Fattah Burhan, commander of the armed forces, and General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo (also known as Hemedti), the head of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) group.
Both groups joined forces in the past to overthrow Islamist autocrat Omar Hassan al-Bashir in 2019, but they are now locked in disagreement about the integration of the RSF into the military.
Mr Hemedti has accused Gen Burhan of being a “criminal” and accused the RSF of launching a coup in the country.
There have been 413 people killed and 3,551 injured in Sudan since the fighting began, according to the World Health Organization.
At least nine children have been killed in the fighting and over 50 have been injured.
Unicef has said that critical life-saving care for an estimated 50,000 severely acutely malnourished children has been disrupted, which is life-threatening.
Evacuation efforts in Sudan have been ramped up as much as possible during the ceasefire as further help will be “potentially impossible” once it ends.
Many countries have already evacuated their citizens from Sudan, but there are still thousands of people remaining.
The British armed forces evacuated all diplomatic staff and their families from Sudan.
The UK worked with France, where a plane carrying about 100 people left Khartoum on Sunday for Djibouti with a second plane carrying a similar number preparing to take off.
Germany has flown out 311 people, while officials in Rome have said that some 140 Italians would be evacuated.
United States special forces evacuated all government personnel and their dependents, as well as several diplomats from other countries, from the embassy on Saturday, using helicopters that flew from a base in Djibouti and refuelled in Ethiopia.
Other countries are also working with citizens to rescue hundreds of residents from Sudan.
It is essential to understand the conflict in Sudan, which centres on a disagreement between two powerful military factions that joined forces to overthrow the country’s former dictator.
This conflict highlights the importance of sustainable peace-building and leadership capacity in transitional democracies, where the risk of intra-state conflicts is high.
The crisis in Sudan has led to hundreds of deaths and the displacement of thousands of citizens.
The ceasefire is essential for evacuations to take place, but the danger of an all-out civil war looms if the root causes of the conflict are not addressed.
Countries are working hard to evacuate their citizens, but there is a need for greater international cooperation and support to provide humanitarian assistance to the people of Sudan.