US says it has evacuated its Sudan embassy staff and their dependents

France helping its nationals leave as fighting escalates in Khartoum

Smoke rises over buildings a week after fighting began in north Khartoum. Reuters

The US said on Sunday it had evacuated members of its embassy in Sudan and their dependents, and declared the nation's diplomatic mission in Khartoum temporarily closed.

The evacuation was announced by President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

“This tragic violence in Sudan has already cost the lives of hundreds of innocent civilians,” Mr Biden said. “It's unconscionable and it must stop.”

Mr Blinken said “all US personnel and their dependents” had been safely evacuated. The US would “continue to assist Americans in Sudan in planning for their own safety”, he added.

All US government personnel and a small number of diplomatic personnel from other countries were evacuated in the operation, which removed fewer than 100 people, according to US officials.

A little more than 100 US special forces members were involved in the evacuation, entering and leaving Sudan without being fired upon by the warring factions, US military officials said.

The US announcement came a day after Saudi Arabia said it had evacuated more than 100 of its citizens, along with those of several other countries, rescuing civilians from the Red Sea city of Port Sudan and taking them to Jeddah aboard navy ships.

France on Sunday said it was evacuating its own citizens.

The evacuations became necessary after neither side in the conflict between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, has shown a desire to end the fighting, which has since its start on April 15 taken the lives of hundreds and trapped hundreds of thousands more at their homes in Khartoum.

Residents have been left with little power and water and dwindling food supplies, while hospitals are overwhelmed.

The two sides have also been fighting elsewhere in the vast Afro-Arab nation of 44 million.

On Sunday morning, there was renewed fighting in Khartoum after relative calm on Saturday under a three-day truce marking Eid Al Fitr, the Muslim holiday that follows the end of the holy month of Ramadan.

Sunday's US announcement followed a statement by the RSF saying it co-ordinated at dawn with a US military mission that arrived in Sudan on board six aircraft. The RSF supervised the preparations that preceded the evacuation and provided protection, it added.

It did not say which airport the evacuation was carried out from. The Sudanese military has acknowledged that the RSF is in control of Khartoum International Airport and another one at a military base in the northern city of Meroe.

Destroyed aircraft at Khartoum International Airport seen in a Maxar Technologies satellite image. Reuters

The two warring sides are led by army chief Gen Abdel Fattah Al Burhan and RSF commander Gen Mohamed Dagalo, better known by his nickname Hemedti. The pair were allies when they removed Omar Al Bashir from power in 2019 amid a popular uprising.

In 2021, they led a military takeover from a civilian-led government that had been in office since August 2019, derailing a democratic transition and plunging Sudan into its worst economic and political crises in living memory.

Their battle in Khartoum raises the threat of a civil war that could break up the country if rebel leaders in outlying regions such as Blue Nile and Darfur, scarred by years of strife, see an opportunity to secede.

Secession is not without precedence in religiously and ethnically-diverse Sudan. In 2011, Sudanese from the mainly animist and Christian south voted for self-determination after more than 20 years of war against the Khartoum government. The secession meant the rest of the country lost most of the nation's oil wealth, a development at the root at the economic crisis that was a cause of the 2018 uprising against Al Bashir.

The latest conflict has brought urban warfare to Khartoum, with the warring parties using tanks, rocket launchers, artillery and, in the case of the army, jet fighters.

As well as crushing hope for a democratic Sudan, the fighting has brought the already impoverished nation to the brink of humanitarian disaster. A third of Sudan's population relied on food aid on the eve of the conflict.

A video clip that surfaced early on Sunday morning purported to show Gen Dagalo for the first time since the fighting began, riding in the passenger seat of one of the British-made, all-terrain vehicles the RSF are known to use.

In desert camouflage fatigues and with a matching scarf on his head and neck, he waved in acknowledgement of cheering fighters.

The location appeared to be the Nile-side Republican Palace, Sudan's traditional seat of power in central Khartoum. The authenticity of the video could not be immediately established.