US, Europe lead evacuations as African nations lag behind

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken says warring parties in Sudan have agreed to a 72-hour ceasefire from midnight (22:00 GMT) on Monday.

This brings some hope to countries, including Nigeria, wanting to pull their trapped citizens out of that country. The Nigerian government says it is working to evacuate about 5,500 citizens, mostly students out of Sudan through a land corridor into Egypt and from there fly them back home.

Nigerian airline, Air Peace has volunteered to lift stranded Nigerians back home, if government can transit them to a safe neighbouring state.

Air peace is building a reputation for patriotism and civic conduct, having engaged in such undertaking in South Africa during the xenophobic attacks against African migrants in that country in 2019.

Meanwhile, the US and European nations have been feverishly moving their stranded diplomatic staff and other citizens out of that country, while most Africans have largely been left to their own devices.

The ceasefire by warring factions in the Sudan, which is scheduled to take effect midnight Monday, is at least the third ceasefire to be announced since violence erupted this month but none have held, the BBC reports.

Mr Blinken said an agreement had been reached between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) after 48 hours of negotiations.

At least 400 people have been killed since fighting erupted on 15 April.

Both sides independently announced their involvement in the ceasefire.

UN Secretary General António Guterres has warned the violence in Sudan risks causing a “catastrophic conflagration” that could engulf the whole region and beyond.

Since the violence began, residents of the battle-scarred capital Khartoum have been told to stay inside, and food and water supplies have been running low.

The bombing has hit key infrastructure, like water pipes, meaning that some people have been forced to drink from the River Nile.

There will be hopes the ceasefire will allow civilians to leave the city. Foreign governments will also hope it will allow for continued evacuations out of the country.

Countries have scrambled to evacuate their diplomats and civilians as fighting raged in central, densely populated parts of the capital.

Earlier on Monday, Mr Blinken said that some convoys trying to move people out had encountered “robbery and looting”.

The US, he added, was looking at potentially resuming its diplomatic presence in Sudan but he described the conditions there as “very challenging”.

Sudan is suffering an “internet blackout” with connectivity at 2% of ordinary levels, monitoring group NetBlocks said on Monday. In Khartoum, the internet has been down since Sunday night.

It is estimated that tens of thousands of people, including Sudanese citizens and those from neighbouring countries, have fled because of the unrest.

A week after intense fighting broke out between two rival forces in Sudan, Saudi Arabia announced evacuations of its stranded citizens from the country.

Since then, a growing list of countries has evacuated diplomats and citizens from Khartoum, Sudan’s capital city as fierce fighting continues.

On Sunday, the US and UK announced they had flown diplomats out of the country.

US authorities said they had airlifted fewer than 100 people with three Chinook helicopters on Sunday morning in a “fast and clean” operation.

The US embassy in Khartoum is now closed, and a tweet on its official feed says it is not safe enough for the government to evacuate private US citizens.

The UK government managed to airlift British diplomats and their families out of the country in what was described as a “complex and rapid” operation.

Foreign Minister, James Cleverly said options to evacuate the remaining British nationals in Sudan were “severely limited”.

The likes of France, Germany, Italy and Spain soon followed in evacuating diplomats and other nationals.

Several other countries were conducting evacuation operations on Sunday:

French President Emmanuel Macron confirmed that a plane had arrived in Djibouti carrying French citizens and others on Sunday, while another evacuation took place on Monday, taking the number of people evacuated so far to 388, its government said.

A handful of Dutch citizens left Khartoum on the French plane, while another with people from the Netherlands on board left early on Monday morning.

Germany’s army said the first of three planes had left Sudan, bound for Jordan, with 101 people on board.

Italy and Spain have evacuated citizens, the Spanish mission included citizens from Argentina, Colombia, Ireland, Portugal, Poland, Mexico, Venezuela and Sudan

Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his government had evacuated its diplomatic staff.

Other countries successfully evacuated people on Saturday. More than 150 people, mostly citizens of Gulf countries, as well as Egypt, Pakistan and Canada, were evacuated by sea to the Saudi Arabian port of Jeddah.

On Sunday, long lines of United Nations vehicles and buses were seen leaving Khartoum heading east towards Port Sudan on the Red Sea, carrying “citizens from all over the world”, a Sierra Leonean evacuee told AFP news agency.