Sudan conflict: More Irish citizens evacuated as fighting between factions rages on

More than 800,000 people may flee Sudan as a result of fighting between military factions, including many who had already come there as refugees, a United Nations official said on Monday.

“Without a quick resolution of this crisis we will continue to see more people forced to flee in search of safety and basic assistance,” Raouf Mazou told a member state briefing in Geneva.

“In consultation with all concerned governments and partners we’ve arrived at a planning figure of 815,000 people that may flee into the seven neighbouring countries.”

The estimate includes around 580,000 Sudanese, he said, with the others existing refugees from South Sudan and elsewhere.

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So far, he said some 73,000 people have already fled to Sudan’s neighbours – South Sudan, Chad, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Central African Republic and Libya.

On Monday evening, the Irish Government indicated another nine citizens and dependents have been evacuated from Sudan, bringing the total to 218 since the outbreak of hostilities.

“Two hundred and eighteen Irish citizens and their dependents have now been evacuated from Sudan,” Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin said on Twitter, one day after saying the total was 209. The evacuation started last week as violence intensified between rival factions in Sudan’s military.

Mr Martin’s department declined say how many were still in the war-torn country but said the number seeking assistance from Ireland’s embassy in Nairobi “continues to reduce”.

“Those remaining in Sudan, as well as those evacuating independently will be assisted by our teams in these locations and with our partners,” the department said.

“Given the ongoing volatile and increasingly fluid situation in Sudan, it is not appropriate at this time to comment on the number of Irish citizens remaining.”

The Government has said the emergency civil assistance team withdrawn over the weekend was no longer necessary as such personnel are deployed when it there is one clear point of exit. The team included members of the Army Ranger Wing, elite forces specially trained for high-risk missions.

“Ireland’s ongoing support of evacuations from Sudan is now multi-locational through [department] consular teams in Dublin, Nairobi, Cairo, Amman, Riyadh and Addis Ababa.”

The department said the Government was grateful for the support of EU partners, Jordan, Norway, Djibouti, the UK and the Republic of Cyprus.

UN aid chief Martin Griffiths will visit Sudan on Tuesday, said Ramesh Rajasingham of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Mr Griffiths was in Nairobi, Kenya, on Monday to discuss the situation in Sudan, which he described as “catastrophic.”

“We need to find ways to get aid into the country and distribute it to those in need,” Griffiths wrote on Twitter.

In separate comments, the United Nations humanitarian co-ordinator in Sudan said the humanitarian crisis was turning into a “full blown catastrophe” and that the risk of spillover into neighbouring countries was worrying.

“It has been more than two weeks of devastating fighting in Sudan, a conflict that is turning Sudan humanitarian crisis into a full blown catastrophe,” Abdou Dieng told member states via video link.

Earlier on Sunday, Amina Mohammed, deputy secretary general of the UN, said the fighting in Sudan, which re-erupted after a 72-hour humanitarian ceasefire collapsed at the weekend, has the potential to be “worse than Ukraine” for civilians.

Ms Mohammed said Sudan’s army and its rival paramilitary group were waging an indiscriminate battle for Khartoum, the capital city of 6 million people. The air force’s bombardment of paramilitary fighters who had dug into positions in people’s homes threatened to cause mass casualties, she said.

Civilians in Khartoum are hiding in houses without air shelters while the air force is bombing parts of the city. There are widespread reports of soldiers belonging to the Rapid Support Forces, a paramilitary unit, commandeering homes, in effect turning the city’s inhabitants into human shields.

Referring to the two generals at the centre of the conflict, Ms Mohammed told the Financial Times: “They’ve gone AWOL and there’s no return to a status quo.”

She said: “We have to pull whatever strings we can to stop them fighting.”

People in Sudan braced for more bloodshed on Monday after rival military forces accused each other of fresh violations of a ceasefire on Sunday as their deadly conflict rumbled on for a third week with no relief in sight.

At least 528 people have been killed and 4,599 wounded since a long-simmering power struggle between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) erupted into conflict on April 15th.

Violence has rocked the capital Khartoum and the western region of Darfur despite numerous ceasefire pledges.

The army and RSF toppled a civilian government in an October 2021 coup but are now locked in a power struggle that has derailed an internationally backed transition to democracy and is threatening to destabilise a fragile region.

[ Sudan: 209 Irish citizens, dependents evacuated, says Martin, as ceasefire extension announced ]

Both sides said a formal ceasefire agreement which was due to expire at midnight would be extended for a further 72 hours, in a move the RSF said was “in response to international, regional and local calls”.

The army said it hoped the “rebels” would abide by the deal but believed they had intended to keep up attacks.

The fighting has pitched Sudan towards a civil war, derailing an internationally-backed transition aimed at establishing a democratic government and sending tens of thousands of people fleeing into neighbouring countries.

Army leader Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan has said he would never sit down with RSF chief Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as Hemedti, who in turn said he would talk only after the army ceased hostilities.

[ Sudan conflict explained: the rival generals behind a deadly power struggle ]

In Khartoum, the army has been battling RSF forces entrenched in residential areas. Fighting has seen the more agile RSF forces fan out across the city as the better-equipped army tries to target them largely by using air strikes from drones and fighter jets.

The conflict has sent tens of thousands of people fleeing across Sudan’s borders and prompted warnings the country could disintegrate, destabilising a volatile region and prompting foreign governments to scramble to evacuate their nationals.

Meanwhile, Micheál Martin said 209 Irish citizens and their dependants have been evacuated from war-torn Sudan on Sunday.

The majority of those evacuated went on flights operated by the United Kingdom via Cyprus, and Mr Martin – the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs – thanked those countries for their support as he announced that the Emergency Civil Assistance Team (Ecat) would now withdraw.

Ireland will continue to provide consular assistance to those in Sudan from its teams in Dublin, Nairobi, Cairo, Amman, Riyadh and Addis Ababa.

The Tánaiste said: “I wish to thank the Ecat team and all those involved in our consular response. Our primary aim has been to offer our citizens every assistance through what has been an extremely difficult and challenging time.” – Reuters/Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2023