Sudan war: government says evacuation effort from warzone 'extremely successful', but UK mission not over yet

The final evacuation flight will leave today Port Sudan - however for people based in the capital Khartoum, this is a difficult journey. There is around 420 miles between the two cities, a more than 12 hour drive through the desert. To arrive for the midday deadline, British nationals would have had to have left early Sunday morning to stand a chance of reaching the port city.

The deadline for British nationals and residents - including NHS doctors - to get to the Port Sudan airfield has been and gone. Hopefully everyone who was trying to get there has made it.

The Foreign Office has not said when the last flight will leave - just that midday local time (11am BST) was the deadline for processing.

We will keep you updated when that flight is due to leave.

Sudan’s warring generals have agreed to send representatives for negotiations, potentially in Saudi Arabia, the UN’s top official in the country said.

The move came even as the two sides clashed in the capital despite another three-day extension of a fragile ceasefire. The talks would initially focus on establishing a “stable and reliable” ceasefire monitored by “national and international” observers, said Volker Perthes.

A string of temporary truces over the past week has de-escalated fighting only in some areas, while in others fierce battles have continued to drive civilians from their homes and push the country into a humanitarian crisis.

Mr Perthes cautioned that logistics for talks were still being worked out. So far, only the military has announced it is prepared to join negotiations, with no public word from its opponent, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

Any talks would be the first major sign of progress since fighting erupted on April 15 between the army, led by General Abdel Fattah Burhan, and the RSF, led by General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo.

Read more about the causes of the Sudanese civil war here.

The United States has conducted its first evacuation of American civilians from Sudan.

Watched over by US military drones, a group of Americans made the perilous journey by road from the capital, Khartoum, to the Red Sea city of Port Sudan.

On Monday, a US navy fast transport ship took 308 evacuees from Port Sudan to the Saudi port of Jeddah, according to Saudi officials.

Tens of thousands of Sudanese people are fleeing the fighting, especially in Khartoum and Omdurman.

Many have headed to the northern borders with Egypt or to Port Sudan. Getty Images has released some powerful images of Sudanese refugees at the border with Chad.

People fear the fighting could spiral further, dragging in others in a country where multiple armed groups exist and have fought several civil wars over the past decade.

There is currently no route for Sudanese refugees to apply for asylum in the UK, despite what Suella Braverman said on Sky News ...

Humanitarian groups have been trying to restore the flow of help to a country where nearly a third of the population of 46 million relied on international aid even before the explosion of violence, the Associated Press reports.

The UN food agency on Monday said it was ending the temporary suspension of its operations in Sudan, put in place after three of its team members were killed in the war-hit Darfur region early in the fighting.

The World Food Programme will resume food distribution in four provinces – al-Qadaref, Gezira, Kassala and White Nile – working in areas where security permits, said executive director Cindy McCain said.

The numbers of those in need of help will “grow significantly as fighting continues”, she said. “To best protect our necessary humanitarian workers and the people of Sudan, the fighting must stop.’’

A day earlier, the International Committee of the Red Cross flew in a planeload of medical supplies to bring some relief to hospitals overwhelmed by the mayhem.

Flight tracking websites have shown a Royal Air Force (RAF) Airbus A400M Atlas plane as having landed at Port Sudan at about 3pm on Monday.

It is thought this is the final evacuation flight for British citizens and residents from Port Sudan. The government had previously given people looking to flee a 11am BST (12noon local time) deadline to get to the airport for procession.

The Foreign Office has not confirmed if this is the evacuation flight, or what time the flight will leave.

The UK’s aerial evacuation mission from Sudan is over with the passengers on the final repatriation flights expected to land in Britain within hours.

Two flights organised by the Royal Air Force (RAF) landed in Cyprus late on Monday.

The evacuees, which include Sudanese doctors working for the NHS, were then expected be transported to the UK within 48 hours of landing at the Larnaca airbase, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) said.

James Cleverly has said the evacuation from Sudan would have a “significant” cost to taxpayers.

The Foreign Secretary told LBC: “It has been a long, complicated and resource-intensive operation.

“At some point in the future we will have to total up how much this will cost, but it will be a significant sum.”

He also explained the decision to halt evacuation flights from Sudan. Cleverly said: “What we have found increasingly now, as people use those land routes to Port Sudan, in many instances they are less in need of an air evacuation from Sudan itself.

“There are a number of options available from Port Sudan, including a ferry across to Saudi Arabia.”

He added: “At the moment we have a warship just off the coast of Port Sudan, we have a cross-Whitehall team of officials in Port Sudan to help British nationals leave the country.

“We can scale that up, or indeed scale that down, according to circumstances.”

A retired businessman from north London has been shot in Sudan, my colleague Lynn Rusk reports for NationalWorld's sister site LondonWorld.

Abdalla Sholgami, 85, who had been trapped in his home near the British embassy in Khartoum for several days, is in hospital receiving treatment for his injuries.

His diabetic wife Alaweya Rishwan, 80, has been left alone for the last six days as her family are desperately trying to get her out safely.

Their granddaughter Azhar Sholgami is sick with worry and says her family have “tried everything” to get her grandparents to safety.

She is “incapacitated” and cannot serve herself and is home alone without any medication or help.

Azhar, a research student at Cornell University, says her family is “heartbroken” and “disappointed” with the British government’s response.

“I’m disappointed, we usually look up to the UK as we feel they have humane values,” Azhar told LondonWorld.

Read the full piece here.