U.S. claims Sudan too dangerous to evacuate Americans
OAN Roy Francis UPDATED 11:09 AM – Thursday, April 27, 2023
The United States has extracted its diplomats and government
employees from Sudan as the conflict in the country continues to
escalate, however the evacuations have left thousands of Americans
behind.
Sudanese
greet army soldiers, loyal to army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, in the
Red Sea city of Port Sudan on April 16, 2023. (Photo by AFP) (Photo by
-/AFP via Getty Images)
The State Department issued a security alert on Tuesday in which it
said that the situation in the country is “not currently safe,” and
advised the estimated 16,000 Americans that are believed to be stuck in
the country to remain sheltered in place.
“Due to the uncertain security situation in Khartoum and closure of
the airport, it is not currently safe to undertake a U.S.
government-coordinated evacuation of private U.S. citizens,” the alert
said.
Over the weekend, the U.S. used special forces units to evacuate
around 70 Embassy staff in a helicopter mission while at the same time
telling Americans that no operation would be conducted to get them out
of the nation.
The State Department had provided information for those would wanted
to leave the country about available border crossing and the
requirements at each location, warning that the fighting is making a lot
of those routes dangerous and unpredictable.
So far, since the fighting broke out in Sudan, at least two Americans are confirmed to have been killed.
While the U.S. is saying that the situation is too dangerous to
evacuate Americans, other countries are proceeding with their own
evacuations.
Countries that have, or are planning to evacuate their citizens, are
the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Canada, Italy, Spain, Sweden,
Denmark, Switzerland, Finland, Norway, Poland, Netherlands, Bulgaria,
Turkey, Greece, Japan, South Africa, Kenya, Palestine, South Korea,
Jordan, and Egypt.
While the United Kingdom has evacuated around 30 of its diplomats, and
their families, that were in the country, about 2,000 U.K. citizens are
still in Sudan. However, the British government has stated that “intense
planning” was underway for a “series of possible evacuations.”
France said that they had evacuated around 500 citizens, from 41
different countries, which included nine Americans. Egypt had urged its
citizens in Sudan to head to Port Sudan in the northern part of the
country for evacuation. Buses have already evacuated an undisclosed
number of Egyptian citizens back into Egypt from the Arqin border
crossing.
