“They are giving civilians no choice but to evacuate,” she said. “If either side wins, it is a loss for everyone.”
Elfaki, who fled her home in Khartoum on the third day of fighting to be with her extended family, said that now even the suburbs are growing more dangerous, noting there have been recent attacks on factories that produce wheat and flour outside the city.
She started packing her family’s bags Wednesday, joining the many Sudanese families who have decided there is no other choice but to journey hundreds of miles to the Egyptian border, where they face hours-long lines in stifling heat. Some families face separation at the border because men of military age are not allowed to leave.
International evacuations from the country have picked up pace, with Britain and India among the many states organizing more departures. Roughly 700 Indians have recently arrived in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, by an Indian navy ship and two aircraft, officials in New Delhi said Wednesday. Britain has evacuated some 300 citizens since it began an airlift from Khartoum on Tuesday according to a government spokesman.
There is no evacuation planned for the some 16,000 U.S. citizens in the country but National Security spokesman John Kirby, who confirmed on Wednesday the death of a second American in country, said travel was being facilitated for those who made it to the Red Sea town of Port Sudan — a 500 miles drive from the capital. He maintained that a cease-fire remained in place and has largely held, but with exceptions.
“We’re grateful that the levels are down — but we want to see the levels at zero,” Kirby said of ongoing violence. The U.S. military is monitoring the routes to Port Sudan with aerial drones, U.S. officials have said. They are also keeping track of the deterioration of humanitarian conditions in Sudan, including shortages of food, water and medicine, Kirby said. “We know that many hospitals are closing,” he said.
The extent of Sudan’s descent into lawlessness was underscored by confusion in recent days about the whereabouts of its former military leader Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who was ousted from his 30-year rule in 2019 and is wanted by the International Criminal Court over alleged atrocities in Darfur.
Sudan’s army released a statement Wednesday saying that Bashir remains under the guard of judicial police in Alia Hospital, where they said he had been moved before the fighting broke out, but did not provide any photographic evidence. Questions arose about Bashir’s location after Ahmed Haroun, a former minister, who had been detained with him in Kober Prison and also wanted for war crimes, announced Tuesday that he had left the prison with other ex-officials.
“In light of the raging battles and the growing dangers around us, we have taken the decision to take responsibility for protecting ourselves,” Haroun said.
Sudan’s Interior Ministry, according to Reuters, said inmates were freed by the RSF paramilitary group, when it attacked Kober and other prisons. The RSF countered that it was the army that freed Haroun as part of a plot by the military “and the defunct regime that aims to undercut the people’s revolution.”
The questions over the whereabouts of Bashir and other past regime officials came as the top U.N. officials in the Horn of Africa said there is no clear sign that either of the heavily armed groups are ready to negotiate, with repeated cease-fires having failed to stop fighting that has killed more than 450 and injured some 3,700.
Volker Perthes, the U.N. secretary general’s envoy for Sudan, said Tuesday that both sides — one led by Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the army chief and de facto head of state, and the other by Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, the RSF leader known as Hemedti — believed that they could achieve a military victory over the other, which he called a “miscalculation.”
“Sudan could become increasingly fragmented, which would have a devastating impact on the region,” he told the U.N. Security Council via video link.
Residential areas, hospitals and mosques have come under attack, and there were reports of shops and cars being looted. U.N. Secretary General António Guterres warned that the conflagration could spark a broader regional conflict, “causing immense suffering for years, and setting development back by decades.”
The World Health Organization said Wednesday that only 16 percent of the country’s health facilities were functioning.
Fresh worries over public health are also emerging, with the WHO warning Tuesday of a “high risk of biological hazards” after a lab in Khartoum with measles, polio and cholera isolates was seized by one of the armed factions. The WHO did not specify what group now controls the lab but said that all the technicians have been evicted.
The takeover is “extremely, extremely dangerous,” said Nima Saeed Abid, the WHO representative in Sudan. Unreliable electricity is compounding the problem. “There is a risk of spoilage of depleting stocks of blood bags due to lack of power. In addition to chemical hazards, biorisk hazards are also very high due to lack of functioning generators,” the WHO said in a statement citing the lab’s director.
Experts warned of an accidental release or intentional misuse of the pathogens and called for the lab to be put under the management of the WHO or Red Cross.
“Both sides are using ammunition that can destroy the safety measures that hold these dangerous microbes,” said Srinath Reddy, a Delhi-based infectious-diseases expert. “There can also be potential misuse because you can use it for biological warfare by using it on who you think are your enemies or even sell it to bad actors.”
Dan Lamothe and Sarah Dadouch contributed to this report.
