Almost 90 Irish citizens evacuated from Sudan

Almost 90 Irish citizens and their dependents have been evacuated from Sudan following the recent outbreak of conflict in the country, Tánaiste Micheál Martin has said.

In a post on Twitter, the Minister for Foreign Affairs confirmed “further progress” had been made in helping Irish citizens flee Sudan.

“A total of 88 citizens and their dependents have now been evacuated,” Mr Martin said.

“My officials in Nairobi and Dublin are maintaining regular contact with registered Irish citizens. Thanks to our international partners for continued support.”

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A team of Irish Army Ranger Wing troops and department officials travelled to the region at the start of the week to help Irish citizens based in Sudan get out of the country.

Citizens are largely being flown out of Sudan on military flights organised by friendly countries.

The fighting in Sudan began in the middle of April amid an apparent power struggle between the two main factions of the military regime.

The Sudanese armed forces are broadly loyal to Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the country’s de facto ruler, while the paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a collection of militia, follow the former warlord Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti.

The power struggle has its roots in the years before a 2019 uprising that ousted the dictatorial ruler Omar al-Bashir, who built up formidable security forces that he deliberately set against one another.

When an effort to move to a democratic civilian-led government faltered after Bashir’s fall, an eventual showdown was inevitable.

Irish aid agency Concern’s country director in Sudan, AKM Musha, and two of his Irish colleagues made the “difficult” journey from Khartoum to Port Sudan amid the escalating conflict.

Mr Musha told RTÉ Radio’s Morning Ireland programme that people were running for their lives, having left everything behind. “Life in Khartoum was horrendous, with fighting going on day and night,” Mr Musha said.

“Hospitals and banks are not open, people cannot access their money and there are food shortages.”

The convoy, which included 80 vehicles and hundreds of people, took 34 hours to make the journey which was “a terrifying and horrible experience”.

“If one car got a flat tyre, all the convoy stopped. It was very hard on the children and older people,” he recalled.

[ UK troops to take over Sudan airfield as evacuations gather pace ]

Mr Musha said before the current hostilities, millions of people in Sudan needed humanitarian support. Other aid organisations like Concern had been working there trying to improve the situation and had seen the suffering increasing.

Concern has suspended operations in the region, which is going to make people’s lives even more difficult, Mr Musha said, but aid organisations simply could not operate in such a hostile and dangerous situation. The hostilities needed to stop so aid organisations could resume their support for millions of people, he said.

Montasia Ismail, an Irish student studying in Sudan, said he and family members “took matters into our own hands” and travelled by bus to Aswan in Egypt. The situation had been “really scary” and a “real nightmare” as the fighting moved closer.

“It was really scary, we were not expecting something like this to happen so close to us,” Mr Ismail said.

In the days leading up to their departure, he had noticed the “unspoken tension in the air”, which everyone felt, but no one talked about it.

In Mullingar, student Noon Abdellatif (17) last heard from her mother Hannah and her five-year-old sister on Monday when they reached the border having left Khartoum by bus on Saturday with members of their extended family.

Ms Abdellatif said the Irish Government did not move quickly enough and should have given people more notice of evacuation efforts. Ms Abdellatif said that if her mother had known of the plan to evacuate Irish citizens from Khartoum it would have saved her the perilous bus journey and the expense.

The prices on buses were “extortionate”, Ms Abdellatif said, with some people taking advantage of the situation which led to people getting on the buses “with empty pockets” having spent everything to get on board.

They were now left with essentially no hope about how they could afford accommodation when they arrived in Egypt.

Ms Abdellatif said her mother told her on Monday that their bus had broken down several times in the desert and that they had no food or water.

“They are in a dire situation,” she said. Ms Abdellatif said she hopes the innocence of her five-year-old sister would shield her from the horrors.

The Mullingar student said that she continues to call her mother’s phone before and after school and at night, and she was trying to find a balance and to stay strong for her family who were witnessing bombs, shootings and dead bodies on the street.

“I have to stay resilient for them,” Ms Abdellatif said.

A Department of Foreign Affairs spokesperson said they are aware of more than 100 Irish citizens still in Sudan. The Tánaiste said that the Government’s teams in Nairobi, Djibouti and Dublin are “continuing to work intensively to secure further evacuations”.