‘I just really miss my family’: Irish family caught in Sudan

A total of 122 Irish citizens and their dependents have been evacuated from Sudan in recent days with the help of France, Spain, Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands, the UK and Jordan, according to the Department of Foreign Affairs.

The number evacuated is expected to rise over the coming days while others are believed to have made their way out of the country overland independently.

The department said on Thursday that since the decision to deploy an Emergency Civil Assistance Team (Ecat), Irish citizens and their families seeking to leave the country through a variety of routes had been receiving support. It said the Government had on Thursday authorised the extension of the Ecat operations to Cyprus through which the UK is routing much of its evacuation effort.

“Due to continued uncertainty about the duration of the current ceasefire, and the generally volatile situation in Sudan, we advise citizens, if they judge it safe to do so, to give serious consideration to evacuation options as they become available. Evacuation operations will only continue for as long as the security situation in Sudan allows,” said Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin.

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Sudan’s army has agreed to extend the truce for 72 hours, according to a statement. The deal, mediated by the US and Saudi Arabia, will see the new truce start at midnight on Friday.

One doctor who is living in Dublin, Mohamed Osman, said his wife went over to her home country of Sudan with their three young children, including nine-month-old twins, about six weeks ago to visit her family. They were staying in Khartoum when conflict between rival factions of the military government began just under two weeks ago on April 15th.

They had to stay there for almost a week before they were able to flee to the safer city of Madani, almost 200km away.

“No internet connections, no water, no electricity, they were just, all day, hearing guns and fire and bombs and everything,” Dr Osman said. “My kids got no sleep, you don’t know if this bomb is going to hit your house or someone else. It was really, really terrible. So, my priority at that stage I said, ‘Look, you need to get out of there as soon as possible to a safe place.’”

Mrs Osman has lived in Ireland for the past five years and has residency here. Dr Osman and their three children all have Irish citizenship. Although the evacuation effort is for Irish citizens only, because Mrs Osman’s children are dependent on her, she qualifies for evacuation too.

But with the family about 10-12 hours away from Khartoum and Port Sudan, where many evacuation efforts are taking place, they have not been able to evacuate the country yet.

The family were unable to drive a car to the evacuation point as it was too unsafe, the doctor said, and people have been advised to travel by bus instead. “There’s no security in the country, there is no actual government to control things. If you take your private car, then you are at risk. They might take it and you will be left in an area where there is nothing and then you will be dead by the night time,” he explained.

“Emotionally I can’t grasp what they are feeling now, but it’s a terrible situation, completely unsafe for them, but at least for the last few days, I think they are feeling a bit better, more secure, because they [and] the rest of their family are in a safe place,” Dr Osman said.

“They went for a holiday, and they were staying there for a couple of weeks, definitely you are going to miss them.” Through tears, he said, “I just really miss my family.”

Although the staff at the embassies in Nairobi and Ethiopia had been “very good in responding to our emails, phone calls and things”, Dr Osman said, because the Irish Government was working in partnership with other countries for their evacuation efforts, “there is no clear answer” to questions about when evacuations would take place.