Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Friday that the US military is formulating plans to evacuate the US Embassy in Sudan as the Biden administration considered whether to withdraw staff from the capital of the nation, which is becoming more insecure.
To ensure that we have as many alternatives as possible should we be required to act, we have sent some troops into the theatre. At a press conference held at the German air base of Ramstein, Austin said, “And we haven’t been asked to do anything yet. “No decision has been made regarding anything.”
A decision about a potential embassy evacuation is due shortly, according to two US officials, although it’s not clear whether there will be a formal announcement.
Last weekend, a bloody power battle between two formerly associated members of Sudan’s governing council started. Already hundreds have perished, tipping a country dependent on food handouts into what the UN terms a humanitarian disaster.
General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, head of the Sudanese army, and US Army General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke by phone on Friday about the safety of Americans there, according to his office.
President Joe Biden authorised a plan this week to station US military close by in case they are need to assist in the evacuation of American diplomats, according to White House national security spokesman John Kirby, without specifying a location.
As Kirby informed reporters, “We are simply pre-positioning some additional capabilities nearby in case they are needed.”
Several countries, including the United States, Japan, South Korea, Germany, and Spain, have been unable to evacuate diplomatic workers because the Khartoum airport is engulfed in fighting and the skies are insecure.
According to a Western official, the evacuation scenario in Sudan is among the most challenging they have ever seen. Americans are probably concentrating on securing a truce so they can utilise it to evacuate troops.
“In this instance, the civil war breaks out in the nation’s capital, just where the airport and embassies are located. It’s really challenging,” the diplomat added.
The amount of violence in Khartoum makes the scenario for evacuation unclear, according to Cameron Hudson, a US Africa policy specialist at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies and a former director for African affairs at the National Security Council.
“Moving people to a safe area to evacuate them is the difficulty,” Hudson said. “There is a conflict going on throughout all corners of the city and the international airport in the midst of the city is not working right now.
Washington has said that individual American people living in Sudan shouldn’t anticipate a coordinated evacuation by the US government. Vedant Patel, a deputy spokeswoman for the State Department, said that the US was in contact with a number of hundred Americans believed to be in Sudan.
The State Department earlier on Friday acknowledged one US citizen’s passing away there.
UN Attempts to Remove Staff
The United Nations, as well as other nations, are considering how to evacuate its inhabitants and personnel.
According to Abdou Dieng, the chief UN assistance official in Sudan, the UN has been attempting to shift workers out of “very dangerous” zones in Sudan and into safer areas. On Wednesday, according to Dieng, he was relocated to a safer place.
800 of the UN’s roughly 4,000 employees in Sudan are foreigners. Under the condition of anonymity, a UN source said that 6,000 more UN staff workers, their families, and related people were present in Sudan.
Sweden said it would evacuate its diplomatic workers and their families as soon as feasible, while Switzerland said on Friday that it was looking into methods to remove its citizens from Sudan.
Around 60 Spanish nationals and others are now being evacuated from Khartoum by Spanish military aircraft, while South Korea has sent a military aircraft to stand by at a US military facility in Djibouti in case it becomes necessary to evacuate its citizens.
