Dublin surgeon appeals to Irish Government to help evacuate family from Sudan

A vascular surgeon at Beaumont Hospital in Dublin has appealed to the Irish Government to help evacuate Sudanese families from Khartoum amid mounting security concerns in the country.

Mr Elrasheid Kheirelseid, a naturalised Irish citizen who has worked in Ireland since arriving from Sudan in 2005, said he has been unable to secure safe passage for his 78-year-old father and two sisters.

Although he has been in contact with staff at the Irish embassy in Kenya, Mr Kheirelseid said without his being physically present in the Sudanese capital, his family cannot get aboard an evacuation flight.

He has also been told, he said, that because they are not minor children or a spouse, they are not considered dependants even though he supports them from his employment in Ireland. Embassy officials have logged details of his family members.

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“We are very limited in options because the airports are all closed. [My father] is an old man; it’s very tough for him to take a bus and travel for a long distance,” he said.

“I thought it might be a good idea to evacuate him as part of European missions because he is a dependent of an Irish citizen.”

However, Mr Kheirelseid said evacuation personnel on the ground in Sudan told him his family could not be put on a plane without an Irish passport or him present. He is now considering flying to Egypt later this week in a bid to get them out.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Foreign Affairs declined to comment on how it defines a dependant. She said that, as of Wednesday evening, 88 Irish citizens and family members had been evacuated and that flights by EU partners and the UK were continuing.

Mr Kheirelseid, who is a former president of the Sudanese Doctors Union of Ireland, said there are hundreds of his compatriots working in the Irish health service and that there was a humanitarian onus on the Government to help their families get out of Sudan. The HSE could not immediately comment on the number of Sudanese doctors working in Ireland.

“If I have to go to Sudan to bring them out I’ll do that,” Mr Kheirelseid said.

He last spoke to his family on Wednesday morning before losing contact. They described gunfire and explosions and remain in their home in the city while evacuation efforts continue against an unsteady ceasefire.

The Department of Foreign Affairs said EU and UK evacuation missions are only in a position to accommodate those with citizenship and their dependants.

Irish Embassies in Jordan, Egypt and Cyprus are providing consular assistance to Irish citizens while officials in Dublin and Nairobi “continue to support citizens and their families still in Sudan who are seeking to depart”.

The 72-hour ceasefire announced on Monday night is “mostly holding”, but with some reports of fighting, the spokeswoman said.

The Government has approved the deployment of an Emergency Civil Assistance Team (ECAT) mission, comprising department personnel and up to 12 members of the Defence Forces.

Whether, and when, it will deploy to Sudan is dependent on operational and security criteria.

“The duration of any mission will be dependent on the progress that can be made, the security situation on the ground and decisions on extraction by partners,” the spokeswoman said.

“The security of the team, and of our citizens and their family members, is paramount.”