The British evacuation mission in Sudan is “not over yet” despite the end of the airlift, Foreign Secretary James Cleverly has said.
The final evacuation flights left Sudan on Monday evening. According to UK government figures, as of Monday at 5:30 p.m., the number of people repatriated from the war-torn African nation by Britain’s armed forces stood at 2,197.
Anyone seeking to leave will now have to make their own way to safety through Port Sudan or at land borders into neighbouring countries.
Cleverly wrote on Twitter on Tuesday: “We’ve coordinated the longest and largest evacuation of any Western country. But the hard work in Sudan hasn’t finished.”
Continued UK Presence
Hundreds of people have been killed in a bloody conflict between the Sudanese army and a powerful paramilitary group known as the Rapid Support Forces, which broke out on April 15.The UK government said on April 23 that the British military had evacuated UK diplomats and their families from Sudan. British Ambassador to Sudan Giles Lever has been relocated to neighbouring Ethiopia to “lead the UK’s diplomatic efforts in the region to bring fighting to an end in Sudan,” the government said.
The Royal Air Force (RAF) took over the Wadi Seidna airfield from the Germans on April 25 to begin airlifting other British nationals and their immediate families who wished to leave and were able to get to the airfield. The evacuees were first flown to Cyprus and then to the UK.
After the final flight left Wadi Seidna on April 29, the government advised any remaining UK citizens seeking evacuation to travel to Port Sudan in the east of the country, where the additional evacuation flights had been arranged to depart on Monday evening.
Cleverly told GB News on Tuesday: “There is still an ongoing humanitarian situation, we still have a presence at Port Sudan, both a military presence and a number of other government officials to help British nationals and their dependents leave the country.”
‘Significant’ Cost
The foreign secretary said the Sudan evacuation operation would have a “significant” cost to British taxpayers.He told LBC Radio: “It has been a long, complicated, and resource-intensive operation. At some point in the future we will have to total up how much this will cost, but it will be a significant sum.”
Cleverly said: “What we have found increasingly now, as people use those land routes to Port Sudan, in many instances they are less in need of an air evacuation from Sudan itself. There are a number of options available from Port Sudan, including a ferry across to Saudi Arabia.”
He added: “At the moment we have a warship just off the coast of Port Sudan, we have a cross-Whitehall team of officials in Port Sudan to help British nationals leave the country. We can scale that up, or indeed scale that down, according to circumstances.”
In addition to the evacuation, the UK government is also engaged in the wider diplomatic and humanitarian efforts in the region.
Refugees
According to the United Nations, more than 100,000 refugees have crossed from Sudan to neighbouring countries to escape the conflict that erupted last month while hundreds of thousands have been displaced within the country.“Over 100,000 refugees are estimated to be among those who have now crossed to neighbouring countries,” Olga Sarrado, spokeswoman at the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, told reporters at a briefing in Geneva on Tuesday.
At the same briefing, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said that 334,053 people had been internally displaced within the country since the conflict began.
“In many cases, the small convoys are in a sense running the gauntlet between warring factions and it’s an extremely difficult and dangerous situation for those who are embarking on these journeys,” said Paul Dillon, IOM spokesman.
A World Health Organization official said it has delivered six containers of supplies to Port Sudan and has another 30 tonnes of aid stocks waiting in Dubai for delivery.
