Sudan conflict: second UK flight lands in Cyprus; UN chief warns fighting could cause ‘immense suffering for years’ – live | Sudan

We now have confirmation that Two Royal Air Force planes have landed at Larnaca Airport in Cyprus as of 6.30am on Wednesday, with the first charter flight back to London set to depart later in the day, PA repors.

Families with young children were among those on the first flights that landed in Cyprus with a British man telling the BBC that his sister, who left Sudan overnight, felt an overwhelming sense of relief.

Three planes were due to have left conflict-torn Khartoum for Cyprus by Wednesday morning, with prime minister Rishi Sunak pledging “many more” would follow as he warned of a “critical” 24 hours.

Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said the UK would take charge of the Wadi Saeedna airstrip near the capital from German forces, after Berlin said its final evacuation flight would leave on Tuesday night.

He said 120 British troops have already been supporting the operation there.

About 260 people were expected to be flown out overnight on three flights, the first landing on Tuesday evening with about 40 people on board.

British nationals have been told to make their own way to the site with some fearing they will not make it due to a petrol shortage, PA reports.

An attack on the prison holding deposed Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir has raised questions about his whereabouts, with one of the warring sides saying he is being held in a secure location and the other alleging he has been released.

Bashir, who ruled Sudan for three decades was overthrown during a popular uprising in 2019. He is wanted by the international criminal court (ICC) for genocide and other crimes committed during the conflict in Sudan’s western Darfur region in the 2000s.

The Sudanese military and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, which together had removed Bashir from power during mass protests, are now battling one another across the capital. The fighting reached the prison over the weekend, with conflicting reports about what transpired.

Military officials told the Associated Press that Bashir, as well as Abdel-Rahim Muhammad Hussein and Ahmed Haroun – who both held senior security positions during the Darfur crisis – had been moved to a military-run medical facility in Khartoum under tight security for their own safety.

The army later accused the RSF of donning military uniforms and attacking the prison, saying they released inmates and looted the facility. The RSF, led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, denied the allegations and claimed that the military “forcibly evacuated” the facility as part of a plan to restore Bashir to power.

The first Turkish civilians evacuated from Sudan returned to Turkey on Wednesday, with more than 100 people arriving by plane at Istanbul Airport, Reuters footage showed.

The Turks came from the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, where they had arrived overland from Sudanese capital Khartoum.

Several more flights were expected later on Wednesday to evacuate the remaining Turkish citizens crossing to Ethiopia from Sudan.

Fighting flared anew in Sudan late on Tuesday despite a ceasefire declaration by the warring factions as more people fled Khartoum and former officials, including one facing international war crimes charges, left prison.

Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan has called on both sides in Sudan to end conflict and return to negotiations.

A boat with 1,687 civilians from more than 50 countries fleeing violence in Sudan arrived in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday, the foreign ministry said, the largest rescue effort by the Gulf kingdom to date.

The group was “transported by one of the Kingdom’s ships, and the Kingdom was keen to provide all the basic needs of foreign nationals in preparation for their departure,” the ministry said in a statement.

Saudi Arabia has received several rounds of evacuees by air and sea, starting with boats that arrived in Jeddah on Saturday carrying 150 people including foreign diplomats and officials.

Thirteen of the civilians who arrived on Wednesday were Saudi, while the rest came from countries across the Middle East, Africa, Europe, Asia and North and Central America, the foreign ministry statement said.

All told, 2,148 people have been evacuated to the kingdom from Sudan so far, including more than 2,000 foreigners, the statement said.

Sudanese scramble to flee their homeland

Kaamil Ahmed

Long queues are building on Sudan’s borders, where people fleeing intense fighting are facing daylong waits and demands for visas in order to cross to safety.

On Tuesday, the UN’s refugee agency (UNHCR) said it was expecting 270,000 refugees to cross into Chad and South Sudan, including South Sudanese returning home. It did not have projections for Egypt or Ethiopia, where many fleeing from the capital, Khartoum, have headed, or for other neighbouring countries. The UNHCR estimated that, so far, up to 20,000 refugees have crossed into Chad from Darfur, and 4,000 into South Sudan.

The intense fighting in Khartoum, which has killed 459 civilians and left many short of supplies, medicine and cash, has caused a scramble for buses heading to the borders or to Port Sudan, where ferries to Saudi Arabia operate.

WhatsApp groups set up to help people get out of Khartoum have been circulating numbers of bus services that promise to reach the borders. Many have headed for Kandahar bus station on Khartoum’s outskirts – some on foot despite the danger of being caught in the fighting – but have found it increasingly crowded, with prices rapidly rising. Tickets reportedly cost more than $500 (£403):

Sudanese and foreigners streamed out of the capital of Khartoum and other battle zones, as fighting Tuesday shook a new three-day truce brokered by the United States and Saudi Arabia. Aid agencies raised increasing alarm over the crumbling humanitarian situation in a country reliant on outside help.

Calls for negotiations to end the crisis in Africa’s third-largest nation have been ignored. For many Sudanese, the departure of diplomats, aid workers and other foreigners and the closure of embassies are terrifying signs that international powers expect the mayhem to only worsen.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned that the power struggle between rival generals and their military forces is not only putting Sudan’s future at risk, “it is lighting a fuse that could detonate across borders, causing immense suffering for years, and setting development back by decades.”

The UN chief urged Sudanese military, commanded by Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan, and the rival Rapid Support Forces, a paramilitary group led by Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, “to silence the guns” immediately.

“The conflict will not, and must not, be resolved on the battlefield,” Guterres told an emergency meeting of the UN security council late Tuesday.

Welcome back to the Guardian’s live coverage of the conflict in Sudan.

As evacuations continue and fighting erodes a planned three-day ceasefire, UN Secretary-General António Guterres has warned that the power struggle between rival generals and their military forces is not only putting Sudan’s future at risk, “it is lighting a fuse that could detonate across borders, causing immense suffering for years, and setting development back by decades.”

The UN chief urged Sudanese military, commanded by Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan, and the rival Rapid Support Forces, a paramilitary group led by Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, “to silence the guns” immediately.

“The conflict will not, and must not, be resolved on the battlefield,” Guterres told an emergency meeting of the UN security council late Tuesday.

We’ll have more on this story shortly. In the meantime, here are the key recent developments:

• Plans are in hand for Sudan’s army commander and de facto leader of the country, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, to meet the head of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), Mohamed Hamadan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, according to a newspaper in Egypt.

• The RSF has claimed that the Sudanese army has breached the 72-hour ceasefire. Gunfire and airstrikes were heard in Khartoum and Omdurman, according to news agencies on Tuesday. The RSF’s claims have not been independently verified.

• Britain’s first evacuation flight landed in Cyprus on Tuesday evening after Sudan’s army and the RSF backed a ceasefire. Two more flights carrying about 220 people in total are expected later.

• Rishi Sunak said there will be “many more” flights evacuating British nationals from Sudan on Wednesday. The prime minister added more than 1,000 people had been contacted.

• The UK defence secretary, Ben Wallace, said evacuations on C130 Hercules and A400M planes would take place for as long as is possible. Germany was expected to fly its sixth extraction service on Tuesday, rescuing a total of almost 500 people.

• There is a “high risk” of a biological hazard incident, according to the World Health Organization, because one of the warring factions has taken control of the national public laboratory in Sudan, which holds samples of diseases including polio and measles. “There is a huge biological risk associated with the occupation of the central public health lab,” said the WHO’s Nima Saeed Abid.

• The UN refugee agency has said there could be further displacement of people, as thousands have already streamed into neighbouring Chad and South Sudan. Since the outbreak of the fighting on 15 April, at least 20,000 Sudanese have fled into Chad and about 4,000 South Sudanese refugees who had been living in Sudan have returned to their home country. One projected refugee total from the UN is as high as 270,000.

• The International Rescue Committee has raised concerns about 3,000 people who have arrived at the Tunaydbah refugee camp in east Sudan, adding to the 28,000 refugees who already live there. An official has said the organisers believe more people will arrive at the camp, which has grown by more than 10% since fighting broke out.

• Ukraine said it had evacuated 138 people, including 87 of its own citizens, from Sudan to Egypt during the ongoing ceasefire.

• Two buses evacuating South African nationals from Sudan have arrived safely at the border with Egypt, a spokesperson for South Africa’s Department of International Relations and cooperation has said.

• France has helped to airlift Irish citizens out of Sudan, according to the country’s ambassador to Dublin. Vincent Guérend said 36 Irish people were among the 500 flown from Khartoum to Djibouti on three French flights in recent days, PA Media reports.