Destroyed military vehicles are seen in southern in Khartoum, Sudan. AP
Washington/Ramstein Air Base, Germany: The US Defence Secretary said on Friday that the military is formulating plans to evacuate the US embassy in Sudan as the Biden Administration considered whether to withdraw staff from the capital of the nation, which is becoming more chaotic.
“We’ve deployed some forces into theater to ensure that we provide as many options as possible if we are called on to do something. And we haven’t been called on to do anything yet,” US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told a news conference at Ramstein Air Base in Germany. “No decision on anything has been made.”
Last weekend, a bloody power battle between two formerly associated members of Sudan’s ruling council began. Already hundreds have perished, tipping a country dependent on food handouts into what the UN terms a humanitarian disaster.
President Joe Biden authorised a plan this week, according to John Kirby, the White House’s national security spokesman, to station US military close by in case they are required to assist in the evacuation of American diplomats.
“We are simply pre-positioning some additional capabilities nearby in case that they’re needed,” Kirby told reporters.
With the airport in Khartoum caught in the fighting and the skies unsafe, nations including the United States, Japan, South Korea, Germany and Spain have been unable to evacuate embassy staff.
Cameron Hudson, a US Africa policy expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and former director for African affairs at the National Security Council, said the level of violence in Khartoum makes the situation for an evacuation unpredictable.
“The major challenge is there’s a war going on across all corners of the city and the international airport in the middle of the city is not functional right now, so the challenge is moving people to a safe space to evacuate them,” Hudson said.
Washington has said that private American citizens in Sudan should have no expectation of a US government-coordinated evacuation from the country. State Department deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel said the United States was in touch with several hundred American citizens understood to be in Sudan.
Earlier on Friday, the State Department confirmed the death of one US citizen in the country.
UN works to extract staff
Other countries and the United Nations are also looking at how they can evacuate citizens and employees.
The UN has been trying to extract staff from “very dangerous” zones in Sudan to move them to safer locations, the top UN aid official in Sudan, Abdou Dieng, said on Thursday. Dieng said he had been moved to a safer area on Wednesday.
The UN has about 4,000 staff in Sudan, of which 800 are international staff. A UN source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there were a further 6,000 UN staff family members and associated personnel in Sudan.
Switzerland said on Friday it was examining ways to evacuate nationals from Sudan, and Sweden said it will evacuate embassy staff and families as soon as possible.
Spanish military aircraft are on standby and ready to evacuate some 60 Spanish nationals and others from Khartoum, and South Korea sent a military aircraft to stand by at a US military base in Djibouti to evacuate its nationals when possible.
Read all the Latest News, Trending News, Cricket News, Bollywood News,India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.