Aerial surveillance over 800 km
American drones, according to American officials, who had been monitoring the ground evacuation routes for several days, provided armed surveillance of a convoy of buses carrying between 200 and 300 Americans for a distance of up to 800 kilometers to Port Sudan, the relatively safe place. US authorities, who had no officials on the ground to oversee the evacuation, were criticized by families of Americans trapped in Sudan for initially ruling out any US-managed evacuation of the estimated 16,000 Americans in Sudan who wanted to leave. US special operations forces briefly traveled to the capital, Khartoum, on April 22 to airlift the US embassy and other members of the US government.
international evacuations
More than a dozen other countries have already evacuated their nationals, using a mix of military aircraft, warships and ground personnel. A wide range of international mediators – including African and Arab countries, the United Nations and the United States – succeeded only in securing a series of fragile temporary truces, which failed to stop the clashes, but created enough calm for tens of thousands of Sudanese to flee to safer areas and for foreign countries to evacuate thousands of its nationals by land, air and sea. Since the conflict broke out between the Sudanese army and the RSF on April 15, the United States has informed its nationals that they must find their way out of the country, although American officials have tried to link the nationals to the efforts evacuation from other countries. That approach has changed, officials said, as US officials took advantage of the relative lull in fighting and organized their own convoy of Americans from a distance. Without the evacuations near the capital, Khartoum, that other countries have planned for their nationals, many American subjects have had to make the dangerous journey overland from Khartoum to the country’s main Red Sea port, Port Sudan. A Sudanese-American family who made the previous trip described passing through numerous checkpoints manned by armed men, bodies lying on the roads and vehicles of other fleeing families killed along the way. In this context, US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said the convoy was carrying US and Sudanese nationals working for the United States and nationals of allied countries. The US official added, “We reiterate our warning to Americans not to travel to Sudan.”
Land and sea walk
From Port Sudan, away from the fighting, the Americans in the convoy could seek positions on ships crossing the Red Sea towards the Saudi port city of Jeddah.
US officials are also working with Saudi Arabia to see if one of the kingdom’s navy ships can ferry more Americans to Jeddah. In this context, officials said that US consulate officials would wait for the Americans once they arrived at the Jeddah wharf, but that there were no US employees in Port Sudan.
Two Americans are confirmed killed in fighting in Sudan on April 15. One was an American civilian who officials say died in a shootout. The other, a doctor from Iowa City, Iowa, was stabbed to death outside his and his family’s home in Khartoum in the chaotic violence that accompanied the fighting.
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